In some scenarios the dog gave the person a quick sniff, sitting down to indicate the presence of COVID. In others, the dog was given a sweat sample to smell, a process that could take a few minutes.
The speed is especially important in situations like the earlier phase of the pandemic when a gap of days between test and result could mean an exponential rise in infections if the person was positive, or scenarios that involve a high volume of people().
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Scent dogs such as beagles, basset hounds, and coonhounds would be the ideal dog for the task, given their natural tendencies to rely on odors to relate to the world, but the studies showed a variety of other dogs are up to the challenge.
Given a few weeks of training, puppies and older dogs, males and females, purebreds, and mixed breeds all performed admirably. In one study, a problematic pit bull terrier that had been abused found a second chance by becoming a perfectly capable COVID detector.
Despite these glowing reviews, there remain challenges to placing man’s best friend in the mainstream of medical diagnosis, although animals have proven successful in the detection of other conditions, such as diabetes and cancer.
Places that were open to using dogs in field experiments tended to be smaller countries such as Finland and Colombia, where there was a desire to explore fast and cost-effective methods of detecting COVID without having to wait for expensive tests to be developed or for reagents to become available().
After conducting a comprehensive review including 29 peer-reviewed studies that includes more than 400 scientists from over 30 countries and 31,000 samples, researchers believe that scent dogs deserve their place as a serious diagnostic methodology that could be particularly useful during future pandemics, potentially as part of rapid routine health screenings in public spaces.
Perhaps, most importantly, the impressive international quality and quantity of COVID scent dog research described in this review for the first time, demonstrates that medical scent dogs are finally ready for a host of mainstream medical applications.
The last thing to note is that dogs not only detect the COVID-19 virus faster, they can do so in a non-intrusive manner, without the environmental impact that comes with single-use plastics.
References:
- Jendrny, Paula et al. Scent dog identification of samples from COVID-19 patients – a pilot study. BMC infectious diseases vol. 20,1 536. 23 Jul. 2020.(https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-020-05281-3)
- Mutesa, Leon et al. Use of trained scent dogs for detection of COVID-19 and evidence of cost-saving. Frontiers in medicine vol. 9 1006315. 1 Dec. 2022.(https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2022.1006315/full)
- Pirrone, Federica et al. Sniffer dogs performance is stable over time in detecting COVID-19 positive samples and agrees with the rapid antigen test in the field.” Scientific reports vol. 13,1 3679. 5 Mar. 2023.(https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-30897-1)
Source: Eurekalert
