Scientists all over the world are adopting new methods to stop corona from spreading. According to research recently published in the BMJ Global Health Journal, dogs can be used to detect corona in airport passengers. These are not any such dogs, but trained sniffer dogs.
This study was done by researchers from the University of Helsinki, Finland. They trained 4 dogs to sniff out SARS-CoV-2 at the start of the pandemic. All these dogs had already received training in detecting drugs, dangerous products, and cancer by smell.
To test whether sniffer dogs could detect corona, 420 people were involved in the research. Of these, 114 people were corona positive and 306 corona negative. The dogs smelled all of these skin swab samples 7 times. In the study, sniffer dogs were up to 92% successful in detecting corona infection.
Scientists involved in the research said that 28 positive samples were of people who did not have any symptoms of the corona. The dogs mistakenly reported only one positive sample as negative and did not smell two samples at all. That is, sniffer dogs correctly detected 25 out of 28 samples. This means that having or not having symptoms did not have a significant effect on the ability of dogs to recognize corona.
After this study, the ability of sniffer dogs was also tested at Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport. PCR samples of passengers were also taken in this test which lasted for 7 months. According to the researchers, sniffer dogs and PCR test results were the same in 98% of cases. The dogs also tested negative samples correctly in 99% of the cases.
Scientists believe that dogs can be used for the first screening for corona test at the airport. It is costly to do a PCR test every time, so it would be better to do a PCR test in the second screening if the corona is positive in the sniffer test.
Scientists told in research that these dogs were less successful in catching the alpha variant than the original strain of Corona. The reason for this is to train them to smell SARS-CoV-2 only. That is, dogs will also recognize the difference between corona variants if they get the right training.