The Nose Knows: Covid-19 Trained SnifferDogs Produce Near 100% Accuracy

That's good news - and it is non-invasive and used from a number of sources. Here's an upload from BBC News last month when the story recently changed. . . Covid-19: Growth in cases may be slowing in England. The growth in cases of coronavirus may be slowing down, the largest study of the infection in England suggests. . ."
So where are the hot spots? Airports

'It's a Game for Them.' Scientists Around the World Are Teaching Dogs to Sniff Out COVID-19

BY ALEJANDRO DE LA GARZA 

 

OCTOBER 9, 2020 12:11 PM EDT 

Now scientists are hoping that dogs’ keen sense of smell, 10,000 times better than that of humans, can help them identify people carrying COVID-19, too...Their goal: to train coronavirus-sniffing dogs, which could then be deployed at schools, airports and other public venues to reinforce existing nasal swab testing programs. A similar study is underway at the University of Pennsylvania...Other studies have produced promising, albeit early, results. In June, a team in France using a small number of samples collected from human patients who had been tested for COVID-19 in PCR tests (the current gold standard for testing) found a high degree of evidence that dogs could detect COVID-19 infections through differences in the smell of human subjects’ armpit sweat. (Also concluded: dogs don’t particularly mind sniffing people’s armpits.) In Germany, researchers ran a small pilot study, published in July, with trained coronavirus-sniffing dogs—corona-schnüffelnder hunde—and showed that the dogs were able to distinguish between coronavirus-positive samples and a control group with an average sensitivity (the rate of detecting true positives) of 83% and a specificity (true negative rate) of 96% after only one week of training. . ."

_____________________________________________________________________________

'Close to 100% accuracy': Helsinki airport uses sniffer dogs to detect Covid

Researchers running Helsinki pilot scheme say dogs can identify virus in seconds

• Coronavirus – latest updates
• See all our coronavirus coverage

Play Video

1:16

 Sniffer dogs used to detect coronavirus in Helsinki airport as part of trial – video

Four Covid-19 sniffer dogs have begun work at Helsinki airport in a state-funded pilot scheme that Finnish researchers hope will provide a cheap, fast and effective alternative method of testing people for the virus.

A dog is capable of detecting the presence of the coronavirus within 10 seconds and the entire process takes less than a minute to complete, according to Anna Hielm-Björkman of the University of Helsinki, who is overseeing the trial.

'Close to 100% accuracy': Helsinki airport uses sniffer dogs to ...www.theguardian.com › world › sep › close-to-100-accur...