Dogs Might Help Detect Coronavirus In Humans: Study

Dogs may have the ability to detect humans with COVID-19 infections, especially the asymptomatic carriers, according to a study.

A team of researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), in collaboration with Medical Detection Dogs, a nonprofit, and Durham University, has embarked on an intensive dog training program to prepare them to provide a rapid, non-invasive diagnosis to restrict the further spread of the disease.

The team, taking cue from dogs’ history of accurately detecting malaria infection in humans, has drafted a plan to prepare the canines in about six weeks to screen for the virus rapidly and accurately, on a 250 people per hour basis.

“Our previous work demonstrated that dogs can detect odors from humans with a malaria infection with extremely high accuracy – above the World Health Organization standards for a diagnostic,” Professor James Logan, head of the Department of Disease Control at LSHTM, said in late March.

The researchers said the COVID-19 odor detection is still in its early days and that it is not yet ascertained whether the disease has a specific odor, insisting the possibility of the same given the fact that other respiratory diseases tend to change the body odor of the bearer. They said dogs being able to detect COVID-19 will be a revolutionary milestone in the fight against the viral pandemic.

The dogs will be made to sniff COVID-19 samples to determine which of them contain the infection as part of the training process, in the same way they were trained to detect diseases like cancer, Parkinson’s, and bacterial infections.

The dogs, once trained, could be assigned to ports of entry to detect the oncoming foreign cases or be deployed in other public places.

“In principle, we’re sure that dogs could detect COVID-19. We are now looking into how we can safely catch the odour of the virus from patients and present it to the dogs,” Dr Claire Guest, CEO and co-founder of Medical Detection Dogs, said. “The aim is that dogs will be able to screen anyone, including those who are asymptomatic and tell us whether they need to be tested. This would be fast, effective and non-invasive and make sure the limited NHS testing resources are only used where they are really needed.”