The Cutest Covid-19 Test Method
Dogs and humans have been friends for hundreds of thousands of years; to the point that we have numerous phrases and idioms dating back centuries mentioning dogs. One such phrase, “dogs are man’s best friend” can be aptly used in the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
While dogs have given company, warmth, and happiness to countless dog-owners during quarantine this pandemic, they are playing an even bigger role in stopping the spread of the virus and saving lives. How? By using their biggest asset: the nose!
It may come as a surprise to many, but a dog’s nose is well capable of distinguishing between a healthy person and a person infected with Covid-19.
According to researchers based in France and Lebanon, this is because the dogs were able to pick up on a specific scent produced by volatile organic compounds that are generated by catabolites, which are produced by the replication of the virus. They escape the body through sweat, which can then be picked up by sniffer dogs. Some studies report the dogs’ accuracy between 94.48% to near 100%. But what’s more? They can detect the virus within seconds.
Although sniffer dogs can not be a substitute for usual testing procedures such as RT-PCR, they are playing an important role in screening large groups of people such as in airports, railway stations as they don’t need to sniff people directly, can screen large samples, and give results almost immediately. Researchers believe that they can be a cheaper and more efficient method in such scenarios than temperature checks, as they can detect patients who are asymptomatic with no fever.
Unfortunately, the findings have not been yet been reviewed and published, which makes it harder for the wider scientific community to evaluate these claims. Despite that, several countries such as the UK, India, Russia, France, UAE, Germany, Thailand, Lebanon have started training dogs for Covid-19 detection and are using them to screen passengers at airports and railway stations.
In India, sniffer dogs are under a 36-week training by the Indian Army for detecting Covid-19 cases by smelling urine and sweat since September last year after a surge of cases in the Army.
While using this method to detect coronavirus may seem unconventional, sniffer dogs have previously also helped identify a variety of illnesses, from Parkinson’s to cancer, and more commonly, diabetes.
Currently, they are very much playing a big role in preventing the spread of the virus in crowded areas, acting as the “first screen of detection” against more inefficient methods of testing, and are providing reliable real-time detection of the disease.
