A: Yep! Dogs are both cute and amazing.
As you probably already know, dogs have great sniffers — with over 300 million olfactory receptors, as compared to humans, who have only 6 million!
Respiratory diseases (such as COVID-19) can change your body odor. And a well-trained dog with its super-sensitive nose can detect the difference.
Since the 1980s, veterinary scientists have trained medical detection dogs to identify a range of diseases, including malaria, cancer, and Parkinson’s. These scientists have recently been working with dogs to identify people with COVID-19 infections.
So far, results are promising. Researchers in Philadelphia, London and Paris have been training various breeds, including Labrador retrievers, cocker spaniels, and Belgian Malinois shepherds. The training itself takes about 6-8 weeks. The dogs are exposed and taught to differentiate the odors of infected patients and non-infected patients in a process known as odor imprinting. In one study based out of Paris (across three sites with 368 total trials), seven Belgian Malinois and one Jack Russell terrier correctly identified the sweat of COVID-19 positive patients with excellent accuracy. Four of the eight dogs had 100% perfect detection skills. The other dogs’ success rate ranged between 83% and 94%. Importantly, all the trained dogs performed much better than just by chance alone.
Medical detection dogs can be non-invasive, accurate, and quick — testing up to 250 people an hour. These well-trained canines could potentially be used to screen large groups in hotels, airports, and hospitals to identify COVID-19 patients, including those who are asymptomatic or presymptomatic.
One of the remaining concerns is whether and how the pups can safely sniff out human sweat without getting infected and/or transmitting the virus to other dogs or humans. However, this does not appear to be a big risk at this point. Dog and human safety is certainly an aspect that researchers will follow closely
In short, while more research (and canine training) is necessary, medical detection dogs show potential to sniff our way to a safer reopening.
