Ministers considered asking the public to "exterminate" cats in the UK in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a former health minister.
Lord Bethell, who served as Matt Hancock's deputy in the Department of Health and Social Care from 2020 to 2021, made the claims on Channel 4 News.
Bethell said concern about household pets like cats showed how little was known about coronavirus when it was first detected in the UK.
The minister said: “What we shouldn’t forget is how little we understood about this disease.
“There was a moment we were very unclear about whether domestic pets could transmit the disease.
“In fact, there was an idea at one moment that we might have to ask the public to exterminate all the cats in Britain.
“Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?
“And yet, for a moment there was a bit of evidence around that so that had to be investigated and closed down.”
Matt Hancock's Covid 19 WhatsApp messages leaked by journalist
This comes after messages sent by Matt Hancock regarding his handling of the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic were leaked to the public by a journalist who wrote his memoir.
The extraordinary leak suggests that Mr Hancock rejected clinical advice on care home testing, something the former Health Secretary denies.
The collection of over 100,000 WhatsApp messages published by The Telegraph appears to show Hancock's response to suggestions by Sir Chris Whitty.
In a message, he said he would rather "leave out" a commitment to testing all of those entering care homes from the community and to "just commit to test & isolate ALL going into care from hospital".
Rishi Sunak backs official Covid inquiry after leaked Hancock WhatsApp messages
The Prime Minister has defended the official coronavirus inquiry as the "right way" to scrutinise the handling of the pandemic.
This comes after Matt Hancock's WhatsApp messages from the time were leaked to the public.
Mr Sunak has urged people not to focus on “piecemeal bits of information” from the tens of thousands of messages made available.
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