Sniffer dog for early detection of SARS Cov 2 cheap and very fast
09/08/2020 Views : 368
YENNI CIAWI
In order to break the chain of SARS-CoV-2
infection, early detection of infected individuals is essential. Volatile
organic compounds produced during respiratory infections produced certain odour
traces, which can be detected by trained dogs with a high degree of precision
and very fast, 250 samples per hour. Dogs were able to distinguish between
infected (positive) and uninfected (negative) individual samples with an
average diagnostic sensitivity of 82.63% with a 95% confidence interval. In
some case, the level reaches 100%. These preliminary findings suggest
that trained sniffer dogs can identify samples of respiratory secretions or
saliva from SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals who are hospitalized by
differentiating samples from SARS-CoV-2-infected and negative controls. This
data can form the basis for a reliable screening method for people infected
with SARS-CoV-2. Dogs can be trained quickly, in just a few days. The
employment of this dog can be done in places where PCR tests are hard to find,
suitable for poor countries that cannot afford the cost of a PCR test. This
application can be applied at the airport, at bus or train stations, at the
border of the country, or in the crowd. Initial dog training has been conducted
at Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine, The USA, other pilot studies
have been carried out at the University of Helsinki, in Germany, and in the UK.
In fact, The UAE and Saudi Arabia have used covid sniffer dogs at their airports. Training is carried
out with strict safety because dogs can also contract Covid-19. A dog's
sense of smell is a million times stronger than a human's. In addition to
tracking the smell of Covid-19, sniffer dogs have also been used to detect
several types of cancer, as well as Parkinson's disease, even long before the
onset of the disease in sufferers.