Protesters trying to save the dog, a mixed breed mutt named Excalibur, scuffled with police as they attempted to stop health department officials from removing the animal from the nurse Teresa Romero's apartment yesterday in Alcorcon on the outskirts of the Spanish capital.
Two people were injured as officers carried away some of the dozens of activists who blocked a white veterinary van from entering the gated complex where the apartment is located, according to an AFP photographer at the scene. Police said they had no reports of any injuries.
The dog had been put to sleep "to avoid suffering," the statement said.
The regional government obtained a court order on Tuesday to euthanise the dog, saying there was a risk it could be "a carrier of the virus even without showing symptoms", and that it could "expel the virus in its fluids with a potential risk of contagion".
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Animal rights groups said there was no evidence that the Ebola virus could be transmitted from dogs to humans.
"The last thing that this nurse needs is to learn that a family member has been lost, even if, as we all hope, her own life is saved," the director of the British branch of the animal rights group, Mimi Bekhechi, said.
The dog's owner, Romero, in her 40s, was part of a medical team that treated two Spanish priests who were brought back from west Africa for treatment for Ebola but both died.
She was diagnosed with the disease on Monday, becoming the first known case of Ebola being transmitted outside of Africa, where a months-long outbreak has killed nearly 3,900 people and infected at least twice as many.