A resident walks a dog in Beijing. The Shangrao city government apologized and issued a statement online stating that the worker who killed a dog while the owner was not in quarantine had been fired. Wu Hanguan/Associated Press hide caption

A resident walks a dog in Beijing. The Shangrao city government apologized and issued a statement online stating that the worker who killed a dog while the owner was not in quarantine had been fired.

BEIJING-Local health workers in some cities in China broke into people's homes and killed their pets while their owners were in quarantine, which sparked outrage online.

In one case, a dog owner named Ms. Fu witnessed a person wearing protective clothing entering her home through her home security camera and beat her pet Corgi with an iron rod when she left the isolation facility die. She tested negative for the coronavirus.

"The dog ran to another room and disappeared, but its whimper was audible. A few minutes later, the workers took out the yellow plastic bag and said they were going to take the dog away," Fu said on social media. Wrote in a long article. Her security camera video went viral on the Chinese social media site Weibo, attracting millions of Internet users who are very angry with the way cats and dogs are handled because they fear that animals will transmit the new coronavirus to humans. .

Under tremendous pressure to keep the COVID-19 infection rate close to zero, local health authorities have been taking extreme measures to prevent local transmission. In the northern city of Harbin, a woman reported that her three cats were killed while completing quarantine in September, which also caused anger online. Authorities in Chengdu and Wuxi also entered private homes and killed their cats while the owners were in quarantine.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that people can spread the coronavirus to their dogs and cats, but the possibility of infection in reverse is "very low." Various studies have shown that transmission from pets to owners is "unlikely" and there is a lack of evidence.

Fu wrote that after the contact tracer discovered that she was in close contact with someone who was later diagnosed with COVID-19, she was suddenly called to Shangrao City for isolation. She was unable to isolate with her dog, but community staff assured her that the Corgi would be taken care of in her home when she was away.

According to a statement posted online, the Shangrao city government later apologized and stated that the worker who killed Fu Jiagou was dismissed for "harmlessly disposing of the pet dog without adequate communication with the pet owner."

This story originally appeared on the morning version of the live blog.