From the survey on 56 institutions, a total of 4,38,582 animals were used for research during 2019-20 comprising 83.9% mice, 9.64% guinea pigs, 5.31% rats, 0.26% other rodents, 0.48% of rabbits, 0.35% of large animals, 0.04% of NHPs and 0.05% of birds. Four institutions reported that they didn’t house any live animals during 2019-20. (Figure 1)
Shut down status and supplies during Lockdown:
During the lockdown period, 12.5% and 82.14% of the facilities were fully and partially operational respectively, whereas 5.36% of facilities were completely closed down (Figure 2).
Cease of essential supplies:
18.6% of the institutions were fully functional with the availability of essential supplies. However, 63.4% of facilities had uninterrupted supplies of critical items such as feed, bedding and drugs. Thirty-seven and a half percent of the facilities had no supplies and they could manage with the available resources. To cope with the situation, 17 institutions started to purchase and use locally available animal feed and 8 institutions found a local alternative for bedding material while 35 institutions didn’t find a need to use local alternatives for any of the essential supplies. Seven percent of the facilities that did not breed animals in-house for research, procured animals from the local areas. The availability of drugs for veterinary use was not a problem and only 3 institutions started to procure drugs available locally (Figure 3,4).
Euthanasia of animals to manage Resources:
As per the survey, more than 50 % (58.92 %) of the facilities tried to avoid euthanasia and were able to manage their daily operations with the available resources. However, 41.1% of the facilities reported partial euthanasia of the animals to optimize the available resources anticipating scarcity of in their vicinity and reduced manpower (Figure 5).
Manpower available during lockdown to cater animal facility:
As per the Department of Personnel and Training, Govt. of India’s (11013/9/2014-Estt.A-III dated 23rd April 2020), institutions had the permission to operate with one-third staff strength. 58.9% of the institutions had reduced the staff strength to 50% to minimize risks by exposing all the staff at the same time to the possible COVID19 infection. Few (16.1%) of the facilities operated with full staff strength whereas 25% of the institutions reduced staff strength where they retained over 50%, but without laying off (Figure 6).
Reduction in breeding program:
It was noticed that 19.64% of the facilities stopped breeding completely and 53.57% partially whereas 16.07% of the facility did not change their breeding program and continued to breed as was being done before the lockdown. The remaining 10.07% of the institutions mentioned that the question on breeding reduction did not apply to them (Figure 7).
Veterinary Care:
The health of the animals was given priority and a majority of the institutes (95.83%) provided veterinary care to animals. While 76.19% of the institutions provided full-time Veterinarians, in 19.64% the availability of veterinarians was on-call and only 8% of the facilities were unable to provide veterinary care (Figure 8).
IAEC meeting for protocols involving animal research:
Indian research institutions continued to perform research and hence, 58.93% of the institutions made use of the CPCSEA order to conduct online IAEC meetings and the rest of the institutes (41.07%) did not perform IAEC meetings during the lockdown (Figure 9).
Morbidity and Mortality reported during lockdown period:
Animal morbidities and mortalities were reported in 64.29% and 8.93% of the facilities respectively. This could be associated with reduced manpower or compromised essential supplies in many facilities due to complete lockdown (Figure-10 and 11). Most of the institutions opined that regional/local care-taking staff from near-by areas shall be posted in facilities to take care of animals during similar crises in the future. A significant association of morbidity, mortality, euthanasia or reduced breeding owing to COVID19 lockdown could be observed from the Chi-squared test (χ2(1, N=54) = 4.103, P = 0.0214).
Most of them opined that there should be surplus stock of critical supplies such as feed and bedding in the institutions. Also, cryopreservation facility, regional centralization by creating common animal facilities in all institutions in respective cities and availing local supplies were the other suggestions on how to tide over similar situations in the future.