With their superior nose power, dogs have been trained to sniff out various diseases, including diabetes, malaria and tuberculosis. Now, new preliminary research led by the University of Veterinary Medicine, Hannover, suggests that pups could also detect when people are infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19…
In this study, it took one week to train eight sniffer dogs to detect the virus, by presenting them with saliva samples and swabs taken from COVID-19 patients, as well as healthy people with no history of the disease.
After training, the dogs were presented with 1,012 randomised samples, and they correctly identified 157 positive samples and 792 negative samples, for an overall detection rate of 94 per cent.
Bet folks could charge less for the test, too. Say, a couple dog cookies for each test. A few buck$ to the handler, record-keeper.
Very interesting. I have also referred that in this article. I ll leave it here in case you are interested to Discover:
*the role of animals in the emergence of #covid19
*which species can get infected
*how can they help humans fight the pandemia
*why are animal-derived diseases getting more frequent.
https://animalsinshape.home.blog/2020/06/06/animals-and-the-covid-19-pandemic/
“Meet the police dogs sniffing out COVID-19 at Massachusetts schools” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-police-dog-massachusetts-schools/
“…the police department reached out to the Forensic Center at Florida International University last year regarding an emerging study on dogs that can detect COVID-19 odors. Pulling from research dating back to 1993, researchers at the school trained dogs to identify different odor characteristics of things like fungi and viruses.
The study found dogs to be more than 90% reliable in detecting COVID-19 odors, with a very low false positivity rate. So, FIU sent the trained dogs to work on the school’s campus and at state emergency operations. They even screened at the Miami International Airport.