A team of researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Durham University in the United Kingdom are looking at if they can train dogs to detect COVID-19 in patients even before people show symptoms.
The research trial, in partnership with the Medical Detection Dogs charity, involves samples taken from healthcare workers who test positive for COVID-19 but are not showing symptoms. The workers will need to wear nylon socks and face masks for a few hours to absorb the smell. According to the researchers, the socks are essential in the process because nylon is a very good matrix to collect odour and has proven to be an easy and effective way to obtain a person’s scent.
The dog training will last between 8-to-10 weeks, and involves monitoring if the dogs can detect the samples from infected people from those samples with other scents from people not infected with COVID-19. Read more >