Rural officers escort quarantined locals to look after livestock

Anna has a hippotherapy center near Igualada, in central Catalonia, in an area that has not been quarantined because of the coronavirus outbreak in the local area, yet she lives in Vilanova del Camí, which is one of the towns that has.

She has 14 horses at the center that have to be fed and looked after. It is something she would normally do three times a day. However, since she was confined to home last Thursday, that simple task has become extremely complicated.

While the emergency plan activated around the Igualada area originally did not take the care of animals into consideration, the growing demand from locals has led rural officers to begin escorting people so that they can provide the care their livestock needs.

The officers are accompanying people to care for their animals 20 times a day on average, and they are subject to strict safety protocols. The officers have to meet the people at a designated police checkpoint, and must not interact with them during the escort.

There are dozens of people subject to confinement at home in the local area who need to care for animals who are either housed in an area that is not quarantined, or that are in a quarantined area while their owners are not.

Anna is just one of them. "Normally I feed them three times a day, but right now I give them everything at once. I try to be as quick as possible because I know that I'm not the only one who needs the services of the rural officers," she says.