Detector dogs have been used for centuries to detect drugs, explosives and bodies. More recently their superior scent detection capabilities have been used in a wide range of fields from bed bug detection in hotels, to SIM cards and hard drives and even to detect cancer 1.
A recent preliminary study carried out by a team of scientists in Germany has found encouraging results suggesting dogs may be a useful tool in providing instant diagnosis of Covid-19 infection 2.
Whilst research is in its infancy, training dogs to detect Coronavirus in the population could prove an invaluable resource in fighting the spread of the disease.
As the use of dogs is non-invasive and doesn’t require expensive laboratory testing, it has great appeal for mass screening.
1 Experimental Biology. “Study shows dogs can accurately sniff out cancer in blood: Canine cancer detection could lead to new noninvasive, inexpensive ways to detect cancer.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 8 April 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190408114304.htm>.
2 Scent dog identification of samples from COVID-19 patients – a pilot study, Jendrny et al. BMC Infectious Diseases (2020) 20:536 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-020-05281-3
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