A group of researchers taught dogs to reliably sniff our COVID-19 — and it only took a week.
The study involved “eight specialised sniffer dogs” from the German military checking samples for the coronavirus. They were able to distinguish between samples from infected and non-infected individuals with an average sensitivity of 83 percent and a specificity of 96 percent.
This was after only a week of training.
The research was conducted by a team from the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover in cooperation with the Bundeswehr, the Hannover Medical School and the University Medical-Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf.
“This method could be employed in public areas such as airports, sport events, borders or other mass gatherings as an addition to laboratory testing, helping to prevent further spreading of the virus or outbreaks,” the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover stated.
The study was published in the journal BMC Infectious Diseases.
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