Are you Covid positive or not? Your dog may clear your confusion
PremiumTwo studies have found that dogs can instantly detect Covid-19 and are ideal for screening in high-throughput settings, such as airports
Dogs have an exceptional sense of smell and researchers and scientists have always used them in the medical field. These remarkable animals can be trained to sniff out cancer, diabetes, and extraordinarily, epileptic seizures before they occur. Now researchers have tried to understand whether dogs' exceptional superpower of smell can also detect Covid-19.
In an article published in BMJ Global Health, the researchers have concluded ddog. The article reported the results of two studies. In both studies, four dogs were tested to see how well they detected coronavirus from skin swabs taken from people with or without Covid.
In the first study, the researchers looked at whether the dogs could identify Covid in the skin swabs of 420 volunteers, 114 of whom had tested positive by PCR.
And, the study found that the dogs detected Covid with a sensitivity of 92% (which refers to their ability to correctly identify those with infection) and a specificity of 91% (their ability to correctly identify those without infection).
Although there was some variation between dogs, they all performed exceptionally well.
The second study involved the dogs sniffing 303 incoming passengers at Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport in Finland. Each passenger also took a PCR test.
The dogs matched the PCR results in 296 out of 303 (98%) of the samples and they correctly identified the swabs as negative in 296 out of 300 (99%) samples.
In a world where we rely on expensive technological solutions, something is reassuring about finding a low-tech option for screening Covid.
The study highlights dogs are quick to train for this task and are ideal for screening in high-throughput settings, such as airports, given how accurately and instantly they detect the infection.