Bahrain uses dogs to detect COVID-19 patients
Police canines receive professional training to detect infected cases
Dubai: Bahrain’s Interior Ministry has started to use police dogs to detect and discover those infected with the coronavirus, local media reported.
It is a new trial launched by Bahrain as part of national efforts to limit the spread of coronavirus pandemic through the use of police dogs of the K9 Unit of the ministry to detect infected individuals through sniffing a sweat sample of each case.
The Medical K9 Detection Section is among the most important sections recently formed to utilise all available capabilities to combat the pandemic. The success rate of the training programme is 92.8 per cent. The trials will take place at ports to detect infections for active and accurate procedures to safeguard public health and safety.
The police dogs received professional training to detect infected cases through sniffing samples of infected and non-infected individuals. The dogs show an ability to detect samples of those infected with the virus. The promising trial included training a group of police dogs under special scientific and veterinary care, in which the sense of smell is used to detect infection and many successful and efficient tests were carried through the police dogs at ports.