Dogs are the most loveable creatures. Their companionship can truly heal us and make us feel more optimistic. And now, recent research suggests that they can also detect COVID-19.
Researchers from Germany have found in their studies that trained sniffing dogs are able to detect and distinguish between samples from infected SARS-CoV-2 patients as well as healthy people with a whopping 94 percent accuracy.
It is no news that dogs have an amazing sense of smell thanks to their over 300 million receptors in their nose, and in the past it has been put to use for finding bombs, drugs on the airport and now recently, the trend has been shifting to training it to detect medical conditions.?
Dogs already known to actively sniff-out diseases, different kinds of cancer as well as some viral infections. And soon SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 will be added to the list.?
For the study, researchers trained eight Bundeswehr (German army) detection dogs for a week to detect saliva and secretion of lungs and windpipe derived from the patients infected from the novel coronavirus.?
Researchers were curious to find if dogs could differentiate between samples of an infected person and samples from a healthy individual. The dogs were tested again and even their handlers and supervising researchers didn¡¯t know which sample was which.?
After sniffing 1,012 samples, researchers claimed that the dogs were accurately able to detect 157 positive identifications, 792 negative identifications with 33 incorrect results -- a 94 percent success rate.
Researcher and Bundeswehr dog trainer Esther Schalke stated, ¡°Dog odour detection is far better than the general public can imagine,' said behavioural researcher and Bundeswehr dog trainer Esther Schalke. Nevertheless, we were amazed at how quickly our dogs could be trained to recognise samples from SARS-CoV-2 infected people.¡±
Paper author and vet, Holger Volk, from the University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover, further stated, 'We have created a solid foundation for future studies to investigate what the dogs smell and whether they can also be used to differentiate between different times of illness or clinical phenotypes."