contracted the disease. At that time, it was not known whether cats could potentially worsen the spread of COVID-19 and officials in the U.K.
contemplated mass euthanization. "In fact, there was an idea at one moment that we may have to ask the public to exterminate all the cats in Britain," Bethell revealed.
According to a 2022 PDSA Animal Wellbeing (PAW) Report, about 24% of adults in the U.K. own a pet cat, which is about 11.1 million cats. "Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?," Bethell added.
Bethell further said that since there were many unknowns about how the virus spread between humans and animals at the time, more research was done and it was advised that transmission from pets to humans was relatively low.