As of January 23, Wuhan City, the epicenter of the novel coronavirus outbreak, has been locked down for 12 days.

While humanitarian aid is arriving from across the world for the people there, the living conditions of the pets left alone at home have emerged to catch public attention.

Most of the owners who departed for the Spring Festival holiday have left their pets with water and food for only around seven days. Now, with the city locked down, they are not able to return and their pets are faced with threats of starvation.

Help in need

Wuhan Small Animal Protection Association (590Pet), the only authorized non-government organization for animal protection, published an announcement on their official WeChat account saying that they are willing to help those who could not return to Wuhan to feed their pets.

According to the announcement, pets owners could join three WeChat groups based on the location of their homes, and fill in a form to get registered. The association would contact each owner based on the information they provided.

The help was provided for free, and volunteers of the association also provided free food and water for the pets. The owners asked for help need to bear the damages caused during the unlocking process.

In order to avoid disputes, the association needs to ask for the owners' authorization, especially for those who are not able to offer their keys or codes for entrance. The whole process, including the unlocking, will be filmed and meanwhile be supervised by the owner through video phone calls.

As of February 1, the association has already received over 700 applications for help, and they have helped with about 200. A volunteer told Red Star News, about 95 percent of the pets they helped with are cats.

Difficulties and obstacles

The association has been racing against time to help saving the pets. They usually screen the applications and try to deal with the emergency cases first. But still, they are quite short-handed.

Meanwhile, living in Wuhan, they are faced with threat of the virus as well.

According to Du Fan, head of the association, they discussed and debated the plan before the launch. Risks do exist for the volunteers, but they were eventually determined to carry out the pets rescue.

The volunteers would usually ask for permissions from the property managers of the communities before entering the owners' homes. The security would take their temperature and lead them in after being permitted.

But there are some communities that are completely locked down due to having confirmed coronavirus cases. In these instances, they had to give up.

Ever since the outbreak of the 2019-nCoV, people have been closely following news about their pets. So far, there is no evidence that pets such as dogs and cats can be infected with the new coronavirus, as per the World Health Organization (WHO).

There is also no official data showing how many pets there are in Wuhan City, Du Fan told the Red Star News. 

"We are taking care of them, as well as the communities," Du said, adding that if the pets are left unattended and die, their bodies could cause other contamination or diseases as well.

"We are doing our best while guaranteeing our own health and the prevention of an epidemic, and I think we, as human beings, should protect the little animals while both are faced with such disasters," Du added.

The lifting of the city's lockdown is unknown, as is when the 2019-nCoV could be wiped out, but more and more people on China's social media platforms have been calling on people not to abandon their pets due to the panic. 

(Cover image designer: Liu Shaozhen)