COVID-19: Study shows dogs can sniff out Coronavirus infections

According to a study by a German Veterinary University, dogs with a few days of training are capable of identifying people having the Coronavirus infection.

Eight dogs from Germany’s armed forces were trained only for a week and gave a 94 per cent success rate in identifying people with the Coronavirus infection, as per a pilot project led by the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. The dogs were to sniff out COVID-19 in the saliva of 1,000 healthy and infected people.

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A professor at the University, Maren von Koeckritz-Blickwede said, “We think that this works because the metabolic processes in the body of a diseased patient are completely changed. We think that the dogs are able to detect a specific smell.”

According to the researchers, dogs have a sense of smell 1,000 times more sensitive than humans. They could be deployed to detect infections at places such as airports, border crossing and sporting events with proper training.