Dogs are known for sniffing out bombs, contraband drugs and certain medical conditions like cancer, diabetes, and Parkinson's disease in humans. This process is termed as 'bio-detection'.
Dogs have a smelling sense which is up to 100,000 times more sensitive than humans. This is why they are present in schools, airports and concerts - to alert if anything is wrong.
Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020, researchers have been exploring if dogs could help in the fight against the virus. Their studies met with success in the recent months.
Scientists at Florida International University conducted a study with four puppies.
In late 2021, they published a double blind study of canine COVID detection which proved that the puppies were able to identify the virus with a 97.5% accuracy, reports The Guardian.
Another research conducted in the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine discovered dogs could identify COVID-19 virus about 82% to 94% of the time.
A recent German study proves that the dogs are able to detect the virus around 95% of the time, which is quite beneficial.
The US government's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) said, dogs are famous for their ultrasensitive olfactory system. They can detect substances with as low concentrations as 1.5 parts-per-trillion, reports India Today.
This is the reason why bio-detection dogs can sniff and tell when a person is infected with the COVID virus.
Dogs are being trained to sniff masks in order to identify Omicron in humans.
As new variants of COVID-19 like Omicron are emerging frequently, the Ohio-based Bio-Detection K9 company, led by Jerry Johnson started training dogs to identify the virus.
However, in case of Omicron, since the infection is causing less effect on the lungs, dogs need to sniff their worn masks, reports The Guardian.
The dogs are able to screen between 200 and 300 people every hour with breaks every 20 minutes.
In Massachusetts, USA, COVID-19 sniffing dogs are trained to identify the present of the virus in school children, reports India Today.
(Written with inputs from The Guardian and India Today.)
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