Austrian army dogs join growing global pack of COVID-sniffers
VIENNA, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Austria's army has successfully trained two dogs to sniff out COVID-19, it said on Tuesday, adding to a mass of evidence that dogs can be deployed to identify carriers of the virus.
Trials across the world from Thailand https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/sweat-sniffer-dogs-make-thai-debut-coronavirus-detectors-2021-05-21 to Britain https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/trained-smelly-socks-bio-detection-dogs-sniff-out-covid-19-2021-05-23 have found dogs can use their powerful sense of smell to detect the coronavirus with a high degree of accuracy, suggesting they could be regularly deployed as an additional line of safety at large events and border entry points.
Airports in Finland https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-finland-dogs-idUKKCN26F1F1 and Chile https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-chile-dogs-idUSKBN28X2S2 began deploying dogs to screen arrivals for COVID-19 last year.
Austrian authorities have now fully trained two dogs, a Belgian Shepherd and a Rottweiler, to detect the scent of COVID-19 after sniffing more than 3,000 samples including from used face masks, with a success rate "far above 80%", Defence Minister Klaudia Tanner said.
"We have long known that our service dogs can sniff out various materials... But what we have achieved here is something very special," she told a news conference.
It takes a dog with previous sniffer experience for other materials around two weeks to be able to tell which samples have COVID-19, and a further three months to fully train it, the head of the army's dog-training centre, Colonel Otto Koppitsch, told the news conference.
Austria has no specific plans to deploy dogs trained to detect COVID-19, but will help train people in other countries how to teach dogs this skill, Tanner said. (Reporting by Francois Murphy; editing by John Stonestreet)
