China city orders all indoor pets of COVID patients to be killed

(WMBF) - Wednesday morning, a city in northern China ordered all indoor pets of COVID-positive residents to be killed.

Translated through Weibo, the document stated, “In order to ensure the safety of positive patients returning home, after communicating with the Langfang City Center for Disease Control and Prevention, it is necessary to comprehensively and thoroughly kill the animals domesticated by positive patients as soon as possible.”

According to the notice published on Weibo, the Rural Affairs Bureau is responsible for designating professional culling teams.

A staff member from the Office of the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau of Anci District confirmed Wednesday afternoon that the “notice was issued by the District Prevention and Control Office and the bureau had also received the notice.”

State-run China News Service reported that the local authorities in the Anci District of Langfang city halted the order at 5 p.m. (5 a.m. U.S. EST).

According to the government post on Weibo, authorities “recognized that this measure was not really appropriate” after hearing from residents and the order was stopped.

The notice apologized for any inconvenience caused and said other preventive measures will be looked into.

It is not known how many pets, if any, were put down.

China has been aggressively pursuing a zero-COVID strategy since the start of the pandemic.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that pets can get COVID-19 from humans but that the risk of pets spreading the disease to people was “low.”