DOGS SNIFF OUT COVID-19: An article published in November 2020 on Nature.com shared that dog trainers are claiming dogs can detect the coronavirus with “almost perfect accuracy.”
Scientists are a bit less enthusiastic, but they do say studies completed show promise and mean that further investigation is worthwhile.
They also say that canines could help to control the pandemic because they can screen hundreds of people an hour in busy places such as airports or sports stadiums, and are cheaper to run than conventional testing methods such as the RNA-amplification technique PCR.
In the case of COVID-19 detection, researchers don’t know for sure what the dogs are smelling, but many suspect that these illnesses cause the human body to let off a distinct pattern of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These molecules readily evaporate to create scent that dogs can pick up.
Riad Sarkis, a surgeon and researcher at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, is part of a French–Lebanese project that has trained 18 dogs. Sarkis used the best two performers for an airport trial in Lebanon.
The dogs screened 1,680 passengers and found 158 COVID-19 cases that were confirmed by PCR tests. The animals correctly identified negative results with 100% accuracy, and correctly detected 92% of positive cases, according to unpublished results.
In the one published journal article on dogs’ efficacy at sniffing out COVID-19, the researchers trained eight dogs on samples taken from the mouths and windpipes of seven people hospitalized with COVID-19 and seven uninfected people. The dogs identified 83% of positive cases and 96% of negative ones.
Meanwhile, critics say the German dog study used samples from too few patients. The dogs could be learning to identify the specific scent of the samples rather than of COVID-19, says Cynthia Otto, who leads the Penn Vet Working Dog Centre at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and is also working with COVID-19 sniffer dogs.
The full article can be read at: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03149-9.
