Super-Sniffers Detect Covid-19 With 94% Accuracy

LONDON, UK: People who are infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus have a distinct odour that can be detected by trained dogs with a high degree of accuracy.

In a study, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) collaboratively with the charity Medical Detection Dogs and Durham University showed that using these super-sniffers could be effective as a new rapid, non-invasive screening tool at ports of entry, as Covid-19 has a distinct smell.

The dogs could detect the virus with up to 94.3 percent sensitivity and up to 92 percent specificity for individuals who were asymptomatic. The study published in May 2021, was part-funded by the UK’s Department of Health & Social Care, and used over 3,500 odour samples.

Professor James Logan, Head of the Department of Disease Control at LSHTM, who led the project, said: “Further research is needed to see if the dogs can replicate these results in a real-world setting, but these findings are hugely encouraging. The advantage of using this method is being able to detect Covid-19 with incredible speed and good accuracy among large groups of people, even in asymptomatic cases".
 
This study, reported in May 2021, is the first to comprehensively assess whether trained dogs can distinguish between the odour of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 and those who are uninfected, in a randomised double-blind trial, with a sufficiently high number of dogs and odour samples.

While PCR is the gold standard of tests, with 97.2% sensitivity and 90% specificity, the researchers emphasise the dogs have the advantage of being incredibly rapid, and non-invasive, with the potential to quickly and passively screen individuals in public places without inconvenience.