Veterinary students and young colleagues

Those of us that were there in 2001 pulling together to try to control the most serious Foot and Mouth (FMD) epidemic ever seen in the UK, will I'm sure have thought long and hard about those time and the parallels we now see with SARS-CoV-2 (the virus responsible for COVID-19). The twentieth anniversary of my short time working for MAFF in Carlisle has certainly brought back some difficult memories for me. Of course, the diseases are very different, over 120 000 people have now lost their lives to COVID-19 in the UK alone and to those grieving loved ones the comparison with a disease that resulted in the death of over 4 million livestock may seem inappropriate. It's not this I want to focus on, but the disruption to veterinary businesses and that of our clients. In that there are similarities, and the turmoil caused by COVID-19 will have consequences long into the future, just as FMD has.