Testing for COVID-19 is now more important than ever to avoid a second wave, sweeping local regions and whole countries in and out of lockdown. However, it has been widely acknowledged that mass testing regimes will play a key role in minimizing the impact of the disease. As testing is proving challenging in some environments and even in some countries, are there other reliable methods which could prevent COVID-19 from spreading? Some dog behavioral experts believe the key could be in the form of our canine friends.
How can dogs act against COVID-19?
Since the global outbreak, researchers have been accessing the accuracy of dogs trained to detect people infected with COVID-19, especially those who are asymptomatic and aren't displaying symptoms.
If proven effective and accurate, detection dogs could be invaluable towards the fight against the spread of COVID-19.
What are dogs trained to detect?
Detection dogs will often have to pass four stages of training before they can begin working in a live environment for a new scent.
The first phase of the program is to train dogs to sniff human sweat samples and see if they can differentiate the sweat odor of COVID-19 [positive] patients compared to that of COVID-19 [negative] persons.
We did not decide to work with drug detection dogs as there is always a possibility that COVID-19 positive or negative people use prohibited substances that would let catabolites be excreted by the axillary sweat.
In many countries worldwide, diagnostic tests are lacking in order to set up a mass detection of COVID-19 contaminant people, we think it is important to explore the possibility of introducing dog olfactive detection as a rapid, reliable and cheap “tool” to either pre-test willing people or be a fast checking option in certain circumstances.
If dogs are able to detect COVID-19 accurately, they will be helpful in airports when identifying whether it is safe for a visitor to enter a country. Emirates Airline and Lebanon have been deploying dogs in airports for several weeks now, with Finland and France (in the Corsica region) also starting to carry out such tests.
As trials continue, the initial research appears to be producing positive results. The hope is that these dogs can begin wider testing on the general public to protect everyone and perform a key role in reducing the spread of the virus.
*Pirrone, F. and Albertini, M., 2017. Olfactory detection of cancer by trained sniffer dogs: A systematic review of the literature. Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 19, pp.105-117.
**Grandjean et al., 2020. Detection dogs as a help in the detection of COVID-19 Can the dog alert on COVID-19 positive persons by sniffing axillary sweat samples ? Proof-of-concept study.
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