Hospitals, desperate for trained medical professionals to help with the influx of coronavirus patients, have enlisted veterinarians to help with the fight.
"We are trained as medical professionals and we triage patients every day, they can't exactly tell us what's wrong," Elaine Holmes, a veterinary surgeon who works at MedVet Chicago told ABC7 Chicago. "But we're very happy to stand alongside our human health allies and be directed to wherever we need to be."
After the University of Illinois' COVID-19 Support Network of Illinois Veterinarians sent out a recruitment letter looking for help, hundreds of veterinarians volunteered to help.
The vets aren't exactly acting as primary care doctors, rather assistants to medical doctors who need an extra hand with treating patients.
But this isn't just happening in Illinois.
Around the United States, animal hospitals, vet hospitals, and zoos have offered ventilators and other medical equipment should medical doctors treating humans who need them.
"Our ventilator, for instance, is a human ventilator; our high-flow oxygen is for humans; our operating rooms are human-standard operating rooms," Homes said. "So, the vast majority of the pieces of technology that we use actually initially were made for the human healthcare side."
Veterinarians or any other volunteers in Illinois interested in helping can click here.
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