These Incredible Dogs Are Being Trained To Sniff Out Covid-19
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Storm, Star, Jasper, Digby, Norman, Asher, Kyp and Bramble.
They might sound like characters in an X-Men film – but they’re far more important than that. These names belong to eight dogs being trained to detect Covid-19 by sniffing it out.
The vision is that one day in the future, they (and a team of fellow canines) could be deployed in public places, such as airports and sports stadiums, to identify people who have the virus – including those who don’t show symptoms.
Historically, dogs trained at the Medical Detection Dogs HQ in Milton Keynes have detected a range of diseases including cancer and Parkinson’s. They can do this because of their heightened sense of smell – it’s thought 30% of the dog’s brain is dedicated to analysing odour and the percentage of a dog’s brain devoted to analysing odours is 40 times larger than that of a human.
The Covid-19 detection dogs have been doing initial training to get used to the handlers, the training room and the system. Meanwhile, researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine are getting ready to collect samples of Covid-19 from NHS hospitals to be distributed to the centre.
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By the time the Covid-19 samples arrive on site, the dogs should be ready to detect the virus’ specific smell. They’ll do this by sniffing different samples in the charity’s training room, then indicating when they’ve found a positive Covid-19 sample by sitting down in front of it. There’ll be some tail-wagging, too.
The training method used is reward-based: dogs are given a treat or get to play a game of fetch when they make an accurate assessment, so they feel encouraged to detect it again and again.
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