German military dogs to sniff out coronavirus
German military dogs to sniff out coronavirus
(Web Desk) - Scientists at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hanover have found that trained sniffer dogs could be used to detect COVID-19 in human samples with a relatively high rate of accuracy, a study published on Thursday revealed.
Eight sniffer dogs from the German Bundeswehr were trained for only a week to distinguish between the mucus and saliva of patients infected with coronavirus and non-infected individuals.
The dogs were then presented with positive and negative samples on a random basis by a machine.
Potential to take this further
The animals were able to positively detect SARS-CoV-2 infected secretions with an 83% success rate, and control secretions at a rate of 96%. The overall detection rate, combining both, was 94%.
In its conclusion based on more than 1,000 sniffed samples, published in the
