Thousands dead... but it's a dog that sparks an outcry:

A Spanish Ebola victim’s pet dog was put down last night over fears it could transmit the disease, prompting outrage from animal lovers who chanted ‘murderers’ outside the woman’s home.

Fury erupted after a government health spokesman confirmed that Teresa Romero Ramos’s dog, Excalibur, had been destroyed. The official explained: ‘Unfortunately we had no other choice.’

The animal was put to sleep inside Mrs Romero Ramos’s home, which was disinfected before the animal’s body was taken away in a white van to a nearby incinerator. 

Health minister Ana Mato is facing calls for her resignation after it emerged that Mrs Romero Ramos complained of feeling unwell six days before she was eventually admitted to hospital. 

She was rushed to hospital by unprotected paramedics in a normal ambulance only taken out of service 12 hours later and found out she had ebola by reading a Spanish newspaper website as she waited to be quarantined.

Her home in Alcorcon near Madrid that she shares with husband Javier Limon Romero, one of those quarantined at Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital, was not disinfected until yesterday morning.

Six people in total have now been quarantined since the start of Monday’s crisis.

They include three other hospital nursing staff who helped treat Miguel Pajares and Manuel Garcia Viejo, the Spanish priests who died after they were repatriated from West Africa. 

Twitter was awash with photographs of dogs, cats and birds which were posted alongside the hashtag ‘SalvemosAExcalibur’ – Spanish for ‘Let’s save Excalibur’.

Mrs Romero Ramos, 44, from Galicia in north-west Spain, who is one of the medical team that treated two repatriated Spanish priests who died from ebola, has been in quarantine since it was confirmed she was carrying the virus.