THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR

SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times which has won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything’s going to be all right read Professor Positivity.

A CHARITY I am involved with, Medical Detection Dogs, has just released the results of the first phase of their study which explores whether Covid-19 has a unique odour which can be picked up by a trained dog.

Six of them went through double-blind testing with the best performance giving a sensitivity of up to 94.3 per cent and specificity of up to 92 per cent. In other words, they are far more accurate than the lateral flow tests on which we have spent millions and millions.

These animals are quite remarkable and their sense of smell is unlike any technology we have developed.

They can smell certain types of cancer, so the results of the study do not come as a huge surprise. But the numbers are impressive.

So how could they be used? Airports would be the perfect setting: a high concentration of people coming from all over the world. A confirmatory PCR test would be needed for anyone who gets sniffed out by the dogs.

The results also showed that asymptomatic people are picked up too.

I wrote about the potential of these dogs last year and I was pleased to see that the Government has helped to fund this study along with other contributors and most importantly members of the public.

We’ve all done a Covid test by now and it is not a pleasant experience. If the use of these dogs at airports and other travel hubs could replace pre-travel testing, then that would be great news.

A long way to go though as the training takes time. Hopefully they will not be needed but the more options we have the better. Never underestimate a dog’s nose and just how much they want that treat!