The UK government at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was considering exterminating all domestic cats. This was announced on March 1 by former Deputy Minister of Health James Bethell.
As Bethell noted, at the beginning of the spread of a new type of coronavirus, experts did not yet know whether pets could transmit this disease.
“At some point, the idea came up that we might have to ask the public to exterminate all cats in the UK. Can you imagine what would start in the country if we did this? – quotes the words of Bettel edition Daily Mail.
In the process of studying the coronavirus, it really turned out later that some animals, including cats, can become infected and carry COVID-19 germs.
In 2020, according to data from the Danish Veterinary and Food Authority, the coronavirus was detected on 207 mink farms, and animals died on 67 of them. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in November of the same year that all minks on fur farms should be killed, explaining that the virus had mutated among animals and spread to humans. Subsequently, this decision was called erroneous.
In November 2021, American scientists named animals capable of carrying COVID-19. According to the results of the studies, sika deer, Asian buffalo, mink, most primates, some equids, sloths, anteaters, pangolins, as well as domestic cats were included in the list of potential carriers of COVID-19.
On February 28, 2022, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) again stated that the coronavirus was of laboratory origin. FBI Director Christopher Ray noted that US intelligence agencies have long concluded that the source of the pandemic is most likely a potential laboratory incident in Wuhan, China.
On May 20, 2021, the US House Intelligence Committee reported “circumstantial evidence” that a new type of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. China immediately called such a theory a slander and a conspiracy.
At the same time, in March 2021, a report was published by an international group of experts from the WHO (World Health Organization) on a trip to China in January-February to conduct a study on the origin of the coronavirus. Experts could not come to a definite conclusion. The most likely is the transmission of coronavirus between animals, and then to humans, the least likely is the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 in the laboratory. In February 2023, WHO decided to stop studying the origin of the coronavirus.
An outbreak of COVID-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, occurred in Wuhan, China at the end of December 2019, then the virus began to spread to other countries. On March 11, 2020, WHO described the spread of coronavirus in the world as a pandemic.
