Canines can be trained to sniff out COVID-19, successfully trialed

The study uncovering canine's ability to detect COVID-19 was published in the journal Forensic Science International: Synergy.

Dogs have up to 300 million scent receptors in their noses, compared to only a measly 6 million scent receptors in humans. Forty percent more brain space in dogs is devoted to analyzing odors than humans, allowing them to detect compounds with even greater sensitivity than some analytical instruments. They detect smells from volatile organic compounds associated with a given source.

Certain volatile organic compounds, known as biomarkers, are created and exhaled by human patients afflicted with diseases like cancer or diabetes and can be detected by trained dogs. Researchers from the Florida International University confirmed that dogs could be trained to detect COVID-19.

During training, four dogs of various breeds were able to correctly identify masks previously worn by individuals testing positive for COVID-19, with accuracies of 96.2%, 99.4%, 98.1%, and 96.3%. Since the study, two of the dogs were used at the annual Food and Wine Festival in Miami in May 2021 and at Miami International Airport to screen individuals for COVID-19 for separate pilot studies.

You can read more from the study here.