Sniffer dogs trained to detect COVID-19 infections

A detection dog or sniffer dog is a dog that is trained to use its senses to detect substances such as explosives, illegal drugs, wildlife scat, currency, blood, and contraband electronics such as illicit mobile phones. The sense most used by detection dogs is smell.

Photo credit: dw.com

Sniffer dogs are already a common sight in airports, usually, they're looking out for drugs, weapons or other contraband.

But specially trained dogs have also been trained to detect infections and diseases, including cancer, malaria and Parkinson's disease.

Scientists at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover have found that army sniffer dogs can recognize between samples from coronavirus-infected and healthy patients. The level of accuracy is high and they hope this could be used to detect COVID-19 in human samples.

Eight sniffer dogs from the German Bundeswehr were trained for only a week to distinguish between the mucus and saliva of patients infected with coronavirus and non-infected individuals.

The dogs were then presented with positive and negative samples on a random basis by a machine.

According to the pilot study published Thursday in BMC Infectious Diseases by the University Veterinary Medicine Hannover, eight dogs from Germany's armed forces trained for just five days before they could identify the virus in humans. They sniffed the saliva of more than 1,000 people, both healthy and infected, identifying the coronavirus with a 94% success rate. 

Professor Dr. Maren Von Köckritz-Blickwede said in a YouTube video said, "We think this works because metabolic processes in the body of a diseased patient is completely changed, and we think that the dogs are able to detect a specific smell of the metabolic changes that occur in those patients."

Dr. Holger Volk, another professor from the university, said that dogs have a sense of smell that is 1,000 times better than humans, so their potential within the medical field is huge. 

"We know for a very long time that dogs have been used in a lot of walks of life, but for medical detection, it's a novel at the end of the day," Volk said. "People have not really realized the potential a dog could have to detect diseased from non-diseased patients."

The samples with which the sniffer dogs are being tested were chemically rendered harmless. It is yet to be proven whether the canines can detect active coronavirus cases in patients. 

The researchers are also analyzing on how well dogs can distinguish samples from COVID-19 patients and those with other diseases such as flu.