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Dogs trained to test positive for the coronavirus now they work at Helsinki airport. The pilot project aims to validate the thesis that animals can smell COVID-19 “even before the first symptoms appear.”
The effectiveness of the solution has not yet been scientifically proven. For this, passengers who agree to undergo the nose test must also do a swab to confirm the canine response.
Anti-COVID dogs at Helsinki airport
At the Helsinki-Vantaa airport I am at the moment 10 dogs at work and 15 instructors, trained in Finland by volunteers and sponsored by a private clinic. Dogs are already used in airports to recognize bombs or drugs. One of the anti-COVID dogs, Kossi, previously worked in hospitals to detect cancers.
The study on the alleged ability of bloodhounds to identify the coronavirus in patients was born at the University of Helsinki, led by the professor Anna Hielm-Bjorkman, who told Reuters today: “What we found in our research is that dogs will find [la malattia] five days before the onset of clinical symptoms.
“They are very good. We got to an accuracy close to 100%”.
A similar experiment has recently been launched in the United Arab Emirates.
How the canine test works
The canine test consists of a passenger rubbing his neck with gauze, which is placed in a container that is taken to another room, where a dog sniffs it and gives an immediate result.
In short, the test itself takes less than a minute. For the moment, however, he anticipates the next saliva swab analysis to confirm or not the test.
The dogs were trained to recognize the “smell” of the virus from sweat or urine samples. When they recognize the smell, they make a specific sound, otherwise they pass.
If the effectiveness of the dogs is proven, there could be a large-scale training. “In the future, it is also possible for these dogs to walk around passengers like customs dogs do,” says Vantaa Deputy Mayor Timo Aronkyto.
