Joe Cocker, the 1-year-old Cocker Spaniel |Source: https://www.dw.com/
Scientists managed to train dogs to detect whether human saliva contains the COVID-19 virus. These dogs were trained at the Hanover University of Veterinary Medicine and may prove beneficial in detecting the spread and controlling the pandemic. These dogs can detect the COVID-19 sample with 94% efficiency even if people are asymptomatic.
As reported, dogs were conditioned and trained with the time to sniff out the “coronavirus odor” that is emitted from cells in infected people.
There are two dogs trained at the Hanover’s University of Veterinary Medicine now—- Filou, a three-year-old Belgian Shepherd, and Joe Cocker, a one-year-old Cocker Spaniel.
The head of the veterinary clinic, Holger Volk said, “dogs could accurately detect COVID virus in the saliva 94% of the time in more than 1,000 samples. Dogs can sniff out people with infections and without infections, as well as asymptomatic and symptomatic COVID patients”
Stephan Weil, premier of Lower Saxony said he was impressed with the study and called for feasibility tests before the sniffer dogs are used in everyday life, such as on people attending concerts.