According to researchers medical detection dogs that are specifically trained to handle the situation could be a huge solution of the current crisis at hand regarding the lack of testing which most countries are experiencing due to the pandemic. According to the head of a certain non-profit organization which trains medical dogs, these specially trained dogs are actually capable of sniff testing 750 people per hour which could be the solution for mass testing.
The potential for these dogs to respond to the current pandemic is still being explored by the London School of Hygiene along with the Tropical Medicine or LSHTM, the Durham University, and also the Medical Detection Dogs organization.
The current study at hand
LSHTM has recently published a press release sometime late March describing the interesting experimental project, which is now seeking to establish whether or not the dogs can be reliable to detect COVID-19 in a certain way that they can actually detect other diseases.
According to a report by Britain's Daily Mirror tabloid last April 17, they are currently planning on training six different dogs to see if the initial trials will be successful. This training involves the dogs being given a specific coronavirus patients' face mask for them to sniff to discover if COVID-19 has a certain unique odor that can potentially be identified by the dog's very own enhanced sense of smell.
This training is believed to take a few weeks of experimentation before the hypothesis can be proven. According to the head of the department of disease control at LSHTM, professor James Logan, it is still in the early days for COVID-19 odor detection and that although it has not yet been confirmed, it is currently known that other respiratory diseases somehow change the body's odor and there is a slight chance that it could be the same with the pandemic.
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If this experiment goes well
If ever the experiment goes well and it is found out that dogs are able to detect COVID-19, this new diagnostic tool could even revolutionize everyone's response to COVID-19. Medical detection dogs are already widely used in order to help screen for quite a range of different conditions which include cancer, malaria, and even Parkinson's.
According to the CEO of the Medical Detection Dogs charity, in a statement to the Mirror, there have already been a numerous amount of fantastic achievements by the dogs' work regarding the detection of human diseases and she believes that they will also be able to train dogs to sniff out COVID-19.
She also suggested that when certain resources along with testing kits are running low, hundreds of people will then be able to be tested in a single go. Since a trained dog can possibly screen up to 750 people at a really quick pace, the officials would then be able to move much faster.
She also said that "By identifying those who need to be tested and self-isolate, they can stop the spread."