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These dogs are trained to detect if someone has COVID-19



While many countries in the world are in race to discover the COVID-19 vaccine, these six noses were also busy for their training in sniffing out coronavirus carrier.




London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Durham University started its intensive training to Norman, Digby, Storm, Star, Jasper, and Asher - to soon help provide rapid, non-invasive diagnoses and  play a major role in preventing further spread of the pandemic in future. 

The researchers believe that the dogs could supplement ongoing testing by screening for the virus accurately and rapidly, potentially triaging up to 250 people per hour, Ishtm reports. Studies have shown that dogs have 300 million olfactory receptors in their noses (50 times more than humans) and their brains are hardwired to analyze smells (40 times more than human brains).  

“We believe dogs can detect COVID-19 and will be able to screen hundreds of people very, very rapidly, so we know who needs to be tested and isolated,” said Claire Guest, CEO of the charity. “We have evidence that dogs can detect bacteria and other diseases, and so believe that taking this project forward will make a huge difference to the ability to control the COVID-19 spread. “



"It's early days for COVID-19 odor detection. We do not know if COVID-19 has a specific odor yet, but we know that other respiratory diseases change our body odor so there is a chance that it does. And if it does, dogs will be able to detect it. This new diagnostic tool could revolutionize our response to COVID-19,” said professor James Logan, head of the disease control department in LSHTM.

The yellow, black and chocolate labs will be trained for three weeks using a process called odor imprinting. Miss M., Poncho and six other dogs will be exposed to COVID-19 positive saliva or urine collected from hospitals and then rewarded with food when they pick out the correct samples, according to a statement from UPenn. When the dogs have the scent, they’ll be tested to see if they can pick out COVID-19 positive people.

Trained dogs could be ready to start sniffing out COVID-19 in humans by July.

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