How airport sniffer dogs could detect Covid-19
Sniffer dogs could be deployed to Aussie airports to identify Covid-19 carriers moving between borders.
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Sniffer dogs could be deployed to airports as a quicker and more non-invasive way to detect Covid-19 carriers travelling between borders with first trial results proving a success.
Global trials including the involvement of the University of Adelaide and Australian Border Force’s National Detector Dog Program Facility in Victoria, have found dogs were able to detect Covid-19 even when patients were asymptomatic or in incubation period.
The reliability of the dog’s nose matched current technology in identifying infected people and could see them deployed not just at airports but also to screen staff in hospitals or travellers in hotel quarantine.
Preliminary control trials were carried out last year involving imprinting detector dogs using positive sweat samples collected from patients in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Another trial was conducted at Sydney International Airport terminal over three weeks in March.
“The controlled trials were completed on 28 February 2021, with results proving that dogs can accurately discriminate between sweat samples taken from persons who have tested positive and negative to Covid-19,” an ABF spokesman said on Tuesday.
The spokesman said the detector dogs could potentially provide efficient and reliable sniffs to “complement” other screening methods.
He added data from the March trial was still being analysed with the research done in conjunction with the Alfort National Veterinary School in France and collaboration with the UAE Ministry of the Interior.
According to Alfort, canine sniffing achieved a 97 per cent success rate.
They concluded using dogs required only a fraction of a second per sample and therefore provided for more rapid and non-invasive screening.
“This study is the first of its type carried out at the international level and should pave the way for a wider use of the olfactory detection dog in the fight against Covid-19 in line with recent work carried out under the aegis of the World Health Organisation,” the French collage concluded.
“Some countries have already deployed dogs in particular the United Arab Emirates with whom we have been working since March 2020, at airports, borders and via mobile canine screening units.”
On average it takes up to eight weeks to train a dog and pass validation tests.
A similar study in the UK also this week reported the distinct smell of Covid-19 had been detected by specifically trained dogs with 94 per cent accuracy.
They were also able to identify infections caused by the coronavirus strain that was dominant in the UK last summer as well as the UK (Kent) version of the virus which appeared later in the year.
“They could detect the new variant without any additional training so this gives us real hope and really suggests that dogs are able to detect different variants of Covid,”, head of the department of disease control at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Professor James Logan said.
Chief scientific officer at UK Medical Detection Dogs Dr Claire Guest said: “These fantastic results are further evidence that dogs are one of the most reliable biosensors for detecting the odour of human disease. Our robust study shows the huge potential for dogs to help in the fight against Covid-19.”
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Originally published as How airport sniffer dogs could detect Covid-19
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