Dog sniffs as good as RT-PCR? Research shows they could be

Researchers from the University of Helsinki have found that dogs could detect positive cases among incoming passengers at the airport with an accuracy of almost 98 per cent

Can dogs sniff out Covid-19? A study from Finland shows that they can. And, quite accurately, especially if the infection is caused by the wild-type virus that’s used to train them.

After training four dogs, researchers from the University of Helsinki tested 420 samples for which the RT-PCR reports were already known. They also tested 303 incoming passengers at the Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport-Finland.

The study found an overall accuracy of 92% as compared to the RT-PCR tests. “Scent dogs trained with wild-type SARS-CoV-2 virus also mastered identification of other variants, although less accurately, revealing their robust discriminatory power,” the study said. The study was recently published in the BMJ Global Health journal.

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The Indian Army also trained two of its dogs to detect Covid-19 last year.

In the first part of the study, which was used for validation, the dogs were accurately able to identify 92% of the samples as either Covid-19 positive or negative. “Failure to identify a COVID-19 positive sample was associated with the SARS-CoV-2 variant status. The dogs indicated correctly…only 36% of the alpha variant samples,” according to the study.

As for the real-life scenario at the airport, the results of the dogs matched the RT-PCR report for 296 of the 303 people, meaning the accuracy stood at 97.7%. The only drawback of the real-life study was that there were very few positive cases – only three of the 303. To ensure that the dogs could sniff out Covid-19 even in such low levels of prevalence, the dogs were also given 115 known RT-PCR positive samples at the airport. They were able to correctly identify 98.7% of them as positive.

At the time of the study – the real-life airport study was conducted between September 2020 and April 2021 – variants were just emerging in the country. The study said, “Since variants did not emerge in Finland at the time of training, only wild-type samples were used. Many of the discrepant results were associated with the new variant. In the future, operational work skills should be kept up by simultaneous training with samples of emerging virus variants.”

Anonna Dutt

Anonna Dutt is a Principal Correspondent who writes primarily on health at the Indian Express. She reports on myriad topics ranging from the growing burden of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and hypertension to the problems with pervasive infectious conditions. She reported on the government’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic and closely followed the vaccination programme. Her stories have resulted in the city government investing in high-end tests for the poor and acknowledging errors in their official reports. Dutt also takes a keen interest in the country’s space programme and has written on key missions like Chandrayaan 2 and 3, Aditya L1, and Gaganyaan. She was among the first batch of eleven media fellows with RBM Partnership to End Malaria. She was also selected to participate in the short-term programme on early childhood reporting at Columbia University’s Dart Centre. Dutt has a Bachelor’s Degree from the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Pune and a PG Diploma from the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. She started her reporting career with the Hindustan Times. When not at work, she tries to appease the Duolingo owl with her French skills and sometimes takes to the dance floor. ... Read More

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