The nose needed for this Covid test isn’t yours, it’s a dog’s
Traveller directed to airport’s health centre for a free virus test if animal signals + ve result
Helsinki, Sept. 24: Travellers arriving at Helsinki’s airport are being offered a voluntary Coronavirus test that takes 10 seconds with no uncomfortable nasal swab needed. And the test is done by a dog.
A couple of Coronavirussniffing canines began work at the Finnish airport on Wednesday as part of a pilot programme that aims to detect infections using the sweat collected on wipes from arriving passengers.
Over the past months, international airports have brought in various methods to detect the virus in travellers, including saliva screenings, temperature checks and nasal swabs. But researchers in Finland say that using dogs could prove cheaper, faster and more effective.
After passengers arriving from abroad have collected their luggage, they are invited to wipe their necks to collect sweat samples and leave the wipes in a box. Behind a wall, a dog trainer puts the box beside cans containing different scents, and a dog gets to work.
The dogs can detect a Coronavirusinfected patient in 10 seconds, and the entire process takes a minute to complete, researchers say. If the dog signals a positive result, the passenger is directed to the airport’s health centre for a free virus test.
Why dogs?
Dogs have a particularly sharp sense of smell and have long been used in airports to sniff out bombs, drugs and other contraband in luggage. They have also been able to detect illnesses such as cancer and malaria.
So in the middle of a pandemic, training dogs to detect Covid- 19 became an obvious choice, said Anna
Hielm- Bjorkman, a researcher at the University of Helsinki who is monitoring the trial.
And they seem to be doing the job, she said. In the first stage of the trial, the dogs could sniff out the virus in a person who is asymptomatic, or before the symptoms appear. They detected it at an earlier stage than a PCR test, the most widely used diagnostic tool for Covid- 19.
In July, researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover in Germany also found that with a week of training, dogs were able to distinguish saliva samples of people infected with Coronavirus from noninfected samples with a 94 percent success rate.
Dogs seem to not be easily infected with the Coronavirus, although they appear to have been in a few instances. Other animals like cats appear to be much more susceptible.
How do they do it?
The sniffer dogs, who are trained to recognize the virus’s scent, detect it by smelling urine or sweat samples, according to the University of Helsinki’s veterinary faculty.