Wednesday, 22 April 2020

Sniffing Out Trouble

The exquisite sense of smell in dogs has been used to detect illegal drugs, explosives and even cancers in people. There is now a suggestion that these animals can be trained to identify someone with a Covid-19 infection (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-uk-sniffer-dogs-lshtm-cases-symptoms-covid-19-a9477981.html). Training in such cases, generally takes only several weeks and some dogs have greater affinity for detection. If it prove possible (not at all unlikely), the dogs could be used at airports and ferry terminals as well as doing rapid preliminary screening of people prior to more traditional clinical tests. The dogs do not appear to get the virus themselves.
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