Dogs are being used to detect COVID-19 amongst people

If you are thinking of going to a concert or festival in Germany, don’t be surprised if a canine sniffs you. Dogs are being used to detect COVID-19 through their sense of smell! It appears that dogs are perfectly able to detect the virus.

This is possible because they are able to sense the volatile organic compounds. These organic compounds are released independently from the body of an infected person. These findings were done in a study conducted by the University of TiHo in Germany.

Since it is a well-known fact that infectious diseases that are of the respiratory tract release a specific type of volatile organic compounds, the exceptional sniffing of dogs is used to detect these compounds. Research shows that dogs are more than capable of recognizing the patterns in body fluids.

There is no lie that when it comes to the sense of smell, rarely anything else compares to that of canines. They have a larger nose, better airflow for enhanced smelling, and 1,000 genes of olfaction. This means that they are able to detect a drop of liquid in 50 million liters of water! Isn’t that impressive? Dogs have 40 times more olfactory receptor cells and an accessory olfactory organ that is called the vomeronasal organ, which amplifies the sniffing ability of dogs.  

The aim of authorities is to deploy dogs that are trained to detect COVID-19 and report to their handler at many events. The result of this will be compared with rtRT-PCR tests and antigen tests. Through this, more information will be gathered about whether or not dogs are the perfect COVID-19 test.

Although this may be hard to digest, the scent detection of dogs is about three times more sensitive than the tools that are currently available.

This finding is definitely an innovative one. Using dogs to sniff out COVD-19 positive patients from the rest can prove to be helpful for everyone across the globe.

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