German Sniffer Dogs Can Detect COVID-19 Patients With Great Accuracy

Dogs are known to have special olfaction with the ability to smell 10,000 times more accurately than humans. With this special ability, dogs are trained to detect diseases like cancer, malaria, and viral infections.

Notably, dogs that have undergone several days of training can now sniff out people with COVID-19 with great accuracy.

Specifically, a new study from the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover and the German Armed Forces shows that if properly trained, dogs can distinguish the saliva samples of people with SARS-CoV-2 and a healthy person, with an accuracy of up to 94%.

According to CNBC, this study opens up a new method to detect COVID-19 as dogs can be deployed to detect injections in public places like airports, border gates, and sporting events where lots of people are involved.

To conduct this study, the scientists trained 8 German sniffer dogs of the army within a week. During training, these dogs sniffed saliva samples from more than 1,000 people included healthy and infected ones. The saliva samples of people positive with COVID-19 were randomly distributed.

According to the research team, dogs are able to detect people infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus because the metabolism of these people has been completely changed, compared to normal people.

A representative of the team says that they think dogs can probably detect a specific odor emanating from the patients as their metabolism changes.

The team adds that the next step in the study will be training dogs to distinguish COVID-19 samples from other illnesses such as influenza.

The study was published on July 23 in the health journal BMC Infectious Diseases.

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