A UK health minister has expressed strong optimism that sniffer dogs could soon be deployed to detect Covid-19 in public places. Lord Bethell, the minister for innovation at the Department of Health and Social Care, described a trial by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) as 'extremely exciting'.
Speaking in the House of Lords, Lord Bethell confirmed that Health Secretary Matt Hancock was visiting the researchers on Tuesday to receive an update on the £500,000 government-funded study. The trial, launched in May, involves six dogs being trained to identify unique odours emitted by coronavirus patients.
If successful, each dog could screen up to 250 people per hour at airports and other high-density venues, potentially detecting asymptomatic carriers. The method has already been trialled in Finland and the United Arab Emirates, where sniffer dogs have been deployed at major international airports since late summer.
Researchers at LSHTM, in collaboration with the charity Medical Detection Dogs and Durham University, are collecting odour samples from infected and uninfected individuals to train the dogs. Previous studies have shown that dogs can detect diseases such as cancer and Parkinson's with 85-90% accuracy, and a German study in July found a 94% success rate in detecting coronavirus from swab samples.
Lord Bethell noted that while the method has not yet been fully validated, he remains 'extremely hopeful' and grateful to those involved in the pilot. If proven effective, the dogs could be ready for deployment within eight to ten weeks after training.
