Funding provided for sniffer dog trials

THE UK Government has provided funding for trials to discover if medical sniffer dogs can detect coronavirus in humans.

A total of six “Covid dogs – a mix of labradors and cocker spaniels – will be given intensive training by the charity Medical Detection Dogs.

The trials aim to determine whether the animals can detect coronavirus in humans from odour samples.

The dogs will be trained using a variety of samples from a number of sources, including those infected with coronavirus and those who are uninfected.

The dogs – Jasper, Asher, Norman, Digby, Storm and Star – will then be trained to detect Covid-19 from the samples.

The trials will form part of research into potential noninvasive, early-warning methods of detecting the virus, and are being backed by £500,000 of government funding.

Training is expected to take as little as eight weeks, says the charity.

If successful, it is thought they will be able to identify the virus before symptoms appear and that each dog could check up to 250 people an hour.

A number of dogs have already been trained by the charity to detect odours of certain cancers, malaria and Parkinson’s disease.

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine will be handling the first phase of the trials. Prof James Logan said: “Our previous work has shown that malaria has a distinctive odour, and with medical detection dogs, we successfully trained dogs to accurately detect malaria.

“This, combined with the knowledge that respiratory disease can change body odour, makes us hopeful that the dogs can also detect Covid-19.”

Minister for Innovation Lord Bethell said: “Bio-detection dogs already detect specific cancers and we believe this innovation might provide speedy results as part of our wider testing strategy.

“Accuracy is essential so this trial will tell us whether ‘Covid dogs’ can reliably detect the virus and stop it spreading.”

Research gathered by MDD has already shown that the dogs can be trained to detect the odour of disease at the equivalent dilution of one teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic-sized swimming-pools of water.

The government says the dogs will only be deployed if backed by strong scientific evidence.