Thursday 20 May 2021

Going to the Dogs

Dogs, using their olfactory sense, are better at detecting infections with the Covid-19 virus, than the lateral flow test (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/may/20/dogs-can-better-detect-covid-in-humans-than-lateral-flow-tests-finds-study). In deed, French studies have shown that dogs are as good at detecting Sars CoV-2, as the 'gold standard' PCR test. The dogs had a 97% success rate with positive samples but also successfully identified most (91%) of negative samples. The results obtained by dogs are also importantly very quick and relative unobtrusive. It seems rather surprising that dogs have not been used more, especially at border crossings.

1 comment:

Paul Brain said...

There is now a report of people in England also using trained dogs for this purpose. The dogs are efficient and fast. Quite variable breeds.

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