Amid tackling the horrendous second wave of the human-to-human transmitting virus, the Tamil Nadu government has been levied with the challenge of addressing a fresh crisis after the captive animals have become susceptible and contracted the viral infection in an unprecedented fashion. In what has become a double whammy, the government has installed a task force to prevent the virus spread among the lions after some of them, which had tested positive for the pandemic, found to have COVID-19 Delta variant. 

According to reports, the four caged lions at Chenna's Arignar Anna Zoological Park, known as Vandalur Zoo, have been found to have the Delta variant, which has emerged to be more aggressive. Earlier, eleven lions had shown symptoms for the pandemic, and of these eleven, nine had tested positive for the COVID-19 infection and two lions have died so far. 

After the lions had shown symptoms, the zoo administration has collected the samples and sent them to the National Institute of High-Security Animal Diseases (NIHSAD) in Bhopal. The NIHSAD is one of the four approved facilities in the country to test captive animals and the institute had on June 3 confirmed that nine lions have contracted the SARS-CoV-2. Of these nine, four lions had now been confirmed to have COVID-19 Delta variant. 

The variant, which has largely been responsible for the surge in cases in humans, was declared a variant of concern by the World Health Organization on May 11. The Vandalur Zoo authorities had on Friday said that they are treating the four lions in the best possible way. 

With the view of addressing the crisis, the Tamil Nadu government has on Friday formed a state-level task force to provide support and guidance to authorities on prevention and mitigation of the COVID-19 infection in wild and captive animals in the tiger reserves, national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and reserve forests in the state. The task force will be headed by Supriya Sahu IAS, the principal secretary to the environment, climate change, and forest department and the task force will have six members. 

In an official release, the government has said that the task force shall have a close watch on disease surveillance, mapping and monitoring system, vaccination, and other important associated departments and publish periodic reports. The task force will be coordinating with various departments and the team has planned to begin the work at the earliest and hold periodic meetings concerning the health of lions. 

 An order issued by Supriya Sahu, the head of the task force, said that the task force for the COVID-19 surveillance and monitoring will commence its work immediately and meet periodically to review the measures. The reports say that so far two lions - 9-year-old lioness Neela and 12-year-old lion Padmanaban at Vandalur Zoo had died on June 3 and June 16 respectively. On June 17, the zoo administration said that the lions are undergoing intensive treatment after the results from NIHSAD.