The COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it a number of new developments. After all, necessity is the mother of invention, and we need new, faster ways to test for COVID-19.
Research has indicated that dogs could harness their super sense of smell to detect the illness, even in asymptomatic persons! Dogs have roughly 60x the number of scent receptors as humans and they can detect changes in body fluids such as saliva which carries COVID-19.
This isn’t the first time the powerful noses have dogs come in handy, and they’re used worldwide to detect things such as drugs and explosives. This is however the first time they’ll be potentially used to detect viral diseases in humans. Of course, this study is still in its infancy and scientists need to ensure that the dogs will not confuse vaccines or other viruses for COVID-19.
This is an international effort being coordinated by the World Health Organization, which sees promise in this potentially mass-testing method. While nasal swabs are invasive and take time to screen each person, dogs can screen up to 300 persons daily at a lower cost, immediately! In turn, this would help to control the spread of the virus, especially in countries that are struggling.
Countries such as the UAE, France, Germany, Finland, Lebanon, and the United States, along with large corporations such as Nascar and the National Basketball Association (NBA) have already begun using dogs as part of the screening process, and hope to train more dogs for this purpose.
Using dogs to detect COVID-19 is a promising endeavor and the hope is that more countries will follow suit. Till then, keep safe!