Sniffer dogs are being trained to detect people with COVID-19 and could be deployed at airports to prevent travellers unknowingly passing on the potentially deadly virus. The charity Medical Detection Dogs has previously trained dogs to detect diseases like cancer, Parkinson’s and bacterial infections, and believes the dogs could also be successfully trained to sniff out the novel Coronavirus.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) widespread testing for COVID-19 is key to stopping the pandemic, with the international health body’s Director General telling governments around the world in mid-March: “Test, test, test.”
“You cannot fight a fire blindfolded. And we cannot stop this pandemic if we don’t know who is infected,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus continued but many governments have struggled to ramp up swab testing to the level that would be required for the WHO’s advice to actually work.
So could medical detection dogs be the answer? Dr Claire Guest, the chief executive of the British sniffer dog charity certainly thinks so, saying that’s she’s sure properly trained dogs could detect people with Coronavirus.
“In principle, we’re sure that dogs could detect COVID-19. We are now looking into how we can safely catch the odour of the virus from patients and present it to the dogs,” Dr Guest explained.
“The aim is that dogs will be able to screen anyone, including those who are asymptomatic and tell us whether they need to be tested. This would be fast, effective and non-invasive and make sure the limited NHS (National Health Service) testing resources are only used where they are really needed.”
Some countries have carried out tests on international passengers arriving at their airports, while Emirates has trialled pre-flight rapid COVID-19 blood tests. Medical detection dogs could potentially make the process of safely and effectively screening passengers on a mass scale much quicker and cheaper.
The charity is currently working with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Durham University to train the dogs and hopes to have six dogs trained in around six to eight weeks.
Professor James Logan, Head of Department of Disease Control at The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine was optimistic about the dog’s ability to sniff out COVID-19, explaining that previous work showed they could detect odours from humans with a malaria infection with extremely high accuracy – above the WHO’s standards for diagnostic tests.
“We know that other respiratory diseases like COVID-19, change our body odour so there is a very high chance that dogs will be able to detect it,” Professor Logan continued. “This new diagnostic tool could revolutionise our response to COVID-19 in the short term, but particularly in the months to come, and could be profoundly impactful.”
The charity believes the dogs would be particularly useful in airports, especially once the pandemic has initially been brought under control to prevent a second wave of the disease. For now, the first set of dogs is undergoing training and if successful, a second batch of dogs will be trained to sniff out COVID-19.
