During the initial phase of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the UK government briefly considered possibility of exterminating all cats in the countryat a time when the possibility of the virus being transmitted between pets and humans was suspected.
The revelation was made this Wednesday by the former British Secretary of State for Health, James Bethell, in an interview with Channel 4, two days after the Telegraph newspaper published an extensive investigation, entitled “The Lockdown Files”, in which it exposed hundreds of From private messages from former British Health Minister Matt Hancock about the sometimes chaotic way London dealt with the pandemic in the first months of lockdowns.
In statements to British television, quoted by The Guardian, Bethell tried to explain that in the first months of the pandemic everyone, including politicians, knew very little about the disease.
“What we cannot forget is how little we understood about this disease. At one time it was not clear whether domestic animals could transmit the disease,” said Bethell, who was part of Matt Hancock’s team. “In fact, there was an idea at one point that we would have to ask people to exterminate all cats in the UK. Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?
Concern for cats came to the fore in July 2020, when a British cat was diagnosed with Covid-19. At the time, UK authorities issued an alert for people to avoid kissing cats, as the animals were suspected of transmitting the disease to humans. Two years later, the first case of a cat transmitting Covid-19 to a person was recorded in Thailand.
Source: Observadora
