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A pilot project using sniffer dogs to provide painless and instant coronavirus testing at Helsinki airport has shown promising initial results and has proven popular with travelers, the researchers said.
Three dogs, named Kossi, ET and Miina, have sniffed swabs taken from 2,200 passengers in the month since the test booth was installed in the airport arrivals hall, and have found the virus in 0.6% of travelers .
Although the investigation shouldn’t be completed until December, the team says the initial findings appear to be in line with the detection rates of nasal PCR tests that are also performed on arriving travelers.
“We have carried out between 16 and 17,000 PCR tests at the airport and less than 1% are positive,” Timo Aronkyto, Vantaa deputy mayor, told reporters.
Compared to the results found by the dogs, “they are almost the same, I don’t think there is a statistical difference,” Aronkyto said.
The researchers are now looking at how closely the two sets of test results match, whether the dogs found coronavirus in passengers whose infection was confirmed by a PCR test, and they hope to release their findings by the end of the year.
Preliminary experiments in the first major wave of infections earlier this year suggested that dogs can detect the virus with close to 100% accuracy, up to five days earlier than a PCR test.
Feedback from arriving passengers, who voluntarily take the free trial, “have been exceptionally positive,” said project manager Soile Turunen.
About 100 travelers a day queue up for the test, which involves swabbing the skin, which is then placed in front of the dog, who will quickly pass a negative sample, but will be drawn to a positive one.
“People don’t complain about the queues, in fact it’s the opposite,” Turunen said.
“They come up to us to say ‘hello’ from morning to night,” he added.
A fourth dog, a German shepherd named Valo, is currently in training to start work in the airport test booth.
The University of Helsinki researchers behind the trial, working with sniffer dog specialists from the Wise Nose organization, hope their research will persuade the government to fund the release of the dogs for other uses, such as at tourist sites or large gatherings. public.
Although sniffer dog trials have been conducted elsewhere, such as the United Arab Emirates, France, Russia, and Chile, authorities have yet to widely embrace the use of canine scent detectors to bolster coronavirus testing, in part because the lack of peer reviews. literature, some researchers believe.
Dog-handling charities have previously worked with dogs to detect cancers, Parkinson’s disease, and bacterial infections using samples taken from humans.
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