World Veterinary Day honors veterinary response to COVID-19

Veterinarians and our teams the world over have risen to the challenges presented by COVID-19. World Veterinary Day, this Saturday, April 24, will honor the veterinary response to the pandemic, and the AVMA has created a new webpage and social media toolkit to help celebrate our profession’s achievements.

Visit avma.org/VetResponders—and share the URL with clients—to explore the many important ways in which veterinarians and veterinary teams have contributed to the COVID-19 response. Not only has our profession overcome unprecedented challenges in delivering necessary services to patients and clients, we’ve also fulfilled essential responsibilities in safeguarding our nation’s food supply, worked on vaccine development, and even administered COVID-19 vaccines to people.

Veterinary professionals were well positioned to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic with a One Health mindset, protecting public, animal, and environmental health in a variety of areas:

• Supplies: In the early days of the pandemic, veterinarians quickly helped supply personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, and other provisions to address human health needs.
• Testing: Veterinarians developed COVID-19 testing kits for people and helped process human samples.
• Research: Veterinarians have been involved in researching the structure and pathogenic mechanisms of the virus that causes COVID-19, ways to reduce the virus’ spread, possible animal reservoirs for the virus, and the role animals may play in passing the virus on to people.
• Teaching: Veterinary educators were able to adapt and continue training the next generation of veterinarians and veterinary technicians.
• Virus surveillance: Veterinarians and veterinary technicians worked within the federal government and collaborated with state, national, and international teams to monitor the virus and develop and refine the ongoing response.
• Vaccine development: Our profession has been working on the front lines in the hunt for new COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics.
• Vaccine administration: Responding to a presidential call, veterinary professional have enlisted as vaccination providers in some areas to help get vaccine shots into people’s arms and put an end to the pandemic.

Learn more

Show the world the importance of veterinary medicine

On World Veterinary Day this Saturday, use the copy-and-paste social media posts and downloadable images in our social media toolkit to help spread the word about the incredible accomplishments of the veterinary profession during this pandemic. Veterinary professionals deserve recognition for how we’ve met COVID-19 challenges, innovating to serve patients and clients with creativity and dedication. 

Thank you to all veterinary responders for the essential roles you continue to play during this pandemic.

The World Veterinary Association created World Veterinary Day in 2000 as an annual celebration of the veterinary profession, taking place on the last Saturday of April.