With a sense of smell estimated to be 1,000 to 10,000 times better than ours, dogs have been known to smell oncoming seizures, low blood sugar, and certain cancers. But can they smell the coronavirus, too?
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According to a May 2021 report by National Geographic, since the spring of 2020, a team of researchers at the US-based University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine have been working to determine if dogs can be trained to find the novel coronavirus in people just by a sniff.
Their proof-of-concept study was published in April in the US-based journal PLOS ONE, and revealed that trained dogs can identify the virus’s unique odour in urine and saliva with 96 per cent accuracy. Now, they are working with the dogs to see whether they can determine the virus’s scent in sweaty T-shirts. And so far, their results show that their dogs – Tuuka, Griz, Toby, Rico, and Roxie – have been successful at this task, as well.
The study has far-reaching implications related to ensuring people’s safety in public places, and the possibility of canine patrols in airports and stadiums. In fact, dogs have already been deployed in Finland’s Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport to detect infected passengers.
According to the National Geographic report, some proponents of canine COVID-19 detectors think that letting dogs sniff passengers could help replace polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, which can take days to process. Trained dogs that can walk through queues of people and quickly detect the virus in sweat would be able to do so without interruption and with minimal risk.
And the dogs would be safe, too. Studies have shown that the coronavirus cannot be transmitted to other people – or animals – through sweat.
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