Coronavirus: Animal shelters clear out twice in one week as pets get adopted in droves

‘We haven’t seen kennels this empty in a while’

Volunteers at a Colorado animal shelter have found a silver lining in the coronavirus pandemic: local residents are adopting pets in droves, to the point where their facilities were fully cleared out twice this week.

The Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region celebrated the exodus of cats and dogs from its two facilities on Facebook, posting videos of the empty animal shelter on Thursday.

The post read: “We emptied out our Cat Adoption Centre on Tuesday, and last night, we adopted out every dog in our available dog kennel! Amazing!”

Another post showed smiling staff at the humane society’s cat adoption centre, as the cages next to them were empty.

The group noted it had previously seen a decrease in the number of cat adoptions, writing on Facebook: “We haven’t seen kennels this empty in a while.”

The pandemic has upended daily life in most states as hundreds of millions of Americans live under some form of shelter-in-place or stay-at-home orders.

Fortunately, all that extra time at home seems to have given some new pet-owners a chance to rescue a dog or cat.

Gretchen Pressley, spokesperson for the group, told The Independent in a statement: “Originally, we saw a decrease in our adoptions as news of the coronavirus spread, but we put out the word into our community, and we saw a huge increase in the number of foster applications we got in and we saw our adoptions come back up.”

“We are so grateful to our community for rising up and helping us get so many pets into wonderful homes,” she added.

Despite the frequent adoptions occurring in recent days, Ms Pressley said the group continues to receive new pets available for adoption every day.

The governor of Colorado has issued stay-at-home orders expected to remain in place until at least April 11 after the state reported over 1,400 cases by Friday.

Analysts say those figures are likely higher, however, citing significant issues the federal government had in rolling out testing for Covid-19 to state across the country.