Dogs can sniff out positive coronavirus samples with 96% accuracy – research

Dogs can sniff out positive coronavirus samples with 96% accuracy – research

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Specially trained medical detection dogs can recognize positive coronavirus samples with 96% accuracy, according to new evidence from the draft study.

The research, conducted by professionals from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine’s Working Dog Center, found that dogs can be trained to identify saliva and urine samples from patients who tested positive for COVID-19.

The study was published on the website of the Public Library of Science after being peer-reviewed.

“A unique odor associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection found in human urine as well as saliva provides an impetus for the development of odor-based screening – whether through electronic, chemical or biological observation methods,” said researchers in the study said.

However, there is a certain concern about the training of such dogs, because since the ultimate goal is to detect COVID-positive patients in the public environment and not from such samples, such training will be dangerous as they need to be trained word. around people who have tested positive for coronavirus.

However, researchers have expressed concern about the method of providing samples used to train dogs, as they might become accustomed to specific samples rather than to some sort of trademark odor of a COVID-positive sample.

“Future dog training and research into biological, chemical and electronic detectors should focus on increasing the number of relevant and new samples,” the study reads.

According to researchers, many samples must be used in the training process.

This is not the first study to promote the idea that coronavirus can be detected by medical detection dogs. In fact, the use of sniffer dogs to detect coronavirus in public spaces is considered a possible method to secure safe reopening of international travel. In February, a German veterinary clinic succeeded in training sniffer dogs to detect the new coronavirus in human saliva samples with an accuracy of 94%. .

“We did a study where we had dogs sniffing samples from COVID-positive patients and we can say that they have 94% in our study … that they can sniff it out,” said Holger Volk, head of the veterinary clinic, said.

“So dogs can really sniff out people with infections and without infections, as well as asymptomatic and symptomatic COVID patients,” he added.

In Finland, dogs trained to detect the new coronavirus sniffed passenger samples at Helsinki-Vantaa airport in Finland last year, in a pilot project along with more common tests.

The Chile International Airport in Santiago also uses dog detectors.

A study published in March found that Thai sniffer dogs trained to detect COVID-19 in human sweat were almost 95% accurate during exercise and that they could identify coronavirus infections in busy transportation within seconds.

“The dogs only take one to two seconds to detect the virus,” Professor Kaywalee Chatdarong, leader of the project at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine in Thailand, told Reuters.

“Within a minute they will be able to pass 60 monsters.”

The Thai researcher said the dogs could detect a volatile organic compound secreted in the sweat of COVID-19 sufferers.

They do not have to sniff people directly, but they can sweat profusely, she added, a task that would not be difficult in a tropical country like Thailand. These fur allies can protect people around the world from further infection. , is another reason they are man’s best friend.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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