Could dogs be our new best friend in the fight against coronavirus?
Report by Andrew Misra
Seeing swabs going up noses in a bid to detect coronavirus has become a routine sight, but there might be a new way to sniff out the virus.
Research involving Durham University has found that infected people have a distinctive odour.
Scientists have used dogs to detect malaria in the past, and now a study has found that not only does Covid have a distinct smell, but that our four legged companions can identify it.
The study, which is not yet peer-reviewed, was led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) collaboratively with the charity Medical Detection Dogs and Durham University. It was part-funded by the UK's Department of Health & Social Care.
Professor Steve Lindsay, from Durham Biosciences Department, was involved in the research.
He said: "Our dogs could actually pick up that scent with very high accuracy, and you'll have to remember that what they're doing is actually detecting a smell on a piece of nylon stocking the size of a fifty pence piece which has been in a freezer for several months. So the dogs are amazing."
"Scientists like to think positively but these results are absolutely better than we imagined."
How did the trial work?
3500 odour samples were collected from volunteers with and without Covid from their socks, t-shirts and masks.
The team then did chemical analysis to establish that there was a smell associated with the virus.
Finally, six dogs were trained to see whether they could recognise Covid from that smell.
What were the results?
The study found that for every ten people with the virus, the dogs could pick out nine - regardless of the amount of virus present and with different strains.
While the trial was done in controlled conditions, it offers hope that the dogs could be used in real world settings.
As we move towards the tail end of the pandemic, it could be another 'paws-ible' tool in our bid to get back to normal.
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