Extrasensory dogs are trained to sniff COVID-19 with human sweat with an accuracy that closely compares with traditional testing.
International researchers have stated that well-trained dogs have the ability to correctly identify coronavirus patients at reported rates of 94% to 98%, according to some studies. If proven effective, they say these dogs could be an asset to public health officials, who could place skilled olfactors in high-traffic centers, including airports, train terminals and public events.
Among the first to launch its canine-based coronavirus testing program: NASCAR. Race officials said Wednesday they had hired the Alabama and Florida-based 360 K9 group to monitor infected guests during their last event – last Sunday’s Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway. and that they will continue the effort “experimentally” for Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500.
“We believe that these dogs and this ability will allow us to quickly confirm that all those people who enter the essential footprint on Sunday: these are racing teams, NASCAR officials, suppliers working inside the garage. Without COVID or not, ”said Tom Bryant, NASCAR’s director of racing operations, in a statement on Nascar.com. “The ability to do that has been the math problem we’ve been trying to solve continuously since March of last year.”
Researchers say these dogs can identify coronavirus infections in “just one or two seconds,” according to Thai veterinarian Kaywalee Chatdarong, who led the investigation of a group of labrador retrievers. Their dog cohorts have a 95% coronavirus detection accuracy rate, they told Reuters on Wednesday.
Chatdarong also suggested that with more practice, dogs could be diagnosed even more quickly.
“In the future, when we send them to airports or ports, where there is an influx of travelers, they will be much faster and more accurate in detecting the virus than temperature controls,” Chatdarong said. In fact, these dogs have already been used at airports in Helsinki, Dubai and elsewhere.
Several U.S. training units have joined the effort to use dogs as another line of defense against the spread of coronavirus, such as the Florida-based K9 BioScent K9 and K9 PI groups.
While still a relatively new approach to disease detection, researchers have relied on dogs in the past to help look for various diseases that can be identified in human sweat and other animals, including some cancers and strains of grip.
It could be some time before we see these widely used detection dogs, as the Food and Drug Administration is perfecting regulations on animal-based disease testing, which has not been clearly defined by the agency, according to the Institute of Food and Drug Law.