Meet the dogs that can sniff out Covid-19

Asher may just look like a cute cuddly dog but he is much more than that. He, along with some of his canine friends, have been trained to sniff out Covid-19 in people and the initial results show they can do it very reliably. This is because a research team, involving Durham, has found that Covid-19 has a very distinct odour - which we as humans can't smell - but the dogs' super sniffing powers can detect it with up to 94 per cent accuracy. Powerful noses The study, which is not yet peer-reviewed, is the most extensive of its kind to date using over 3,500 odour samples donated by the public and NHS staff. It involved training dogs to distinguish between infected and uninfected people alongside odour analysis and modelling. The dogs were able to detect odour from individuals with Covid-19 regardless of whether they had symptoms or not, as well as those with two different strains, and with both high and low viral loads. Although the dogs were trained in a trial setting and more work is needed to transfer the method to real-world locations, the preliminary results show that specially trained dogs can rapidly, non-invasively sniff out Covid-19.