A British charity, Medical Detection Dogs, is working with scientists to train dogs to help identify patients with new coronavirus infections (Covid-19), according to an April 17 report by Britain's Daily Mirror tabloid.
The CEO of the charity believes that these dogs can sniff up to 750 people per hour, which will greatly contribute to the detection capabilities of the world.
Claire Guest, CEO of the Medical Detection Dogs charity, told the Mirror: "There have already been so many fantastic achievements in the dogs' work to detect human disease, and I believe they can be trained to sniff out COVID-19."
In March of this year, the charity conducted a medical trial in collaboration with the University of Durham and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) to see if these canines can sniff people carrying COVID-19.
Six dogs were involved in the initial trial, which included masks for dogs sniffing coronavirus patients to determine whether the virus had a specific smell.
The charity said that dogs can already smell diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's disease or other bacterial infections, because each disease has a unique smell.
In addition, these dogs are able to "perceive" subtle changes in skin temperature, so they may be able to tell if someone has a fever.
The purpose of this study is to enable dogs to screen anyone, including those who are asymptomatic, and tell us whether they need to be tested. This will be a quick, effective and non-invasive method of initial identification, thus ensuring that limited resources are used where it is really needed.
Researchers say that other respiratory diseases like Covid-19 change our body odor, so dogs are likely to recognize it. Previous studies have shown that dogs can detect the odor of humans infected with malaria with extremely high accuracy, even higher than the World Health Organization diagnostic criteria.
If the research yields positive results, the trial will be completed within 6 weeks. And you can also use detection dogs at the airport to quickly identify people carrying the virus when the epidemic is over. This will help prevent the epidemic from recurring.
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