We pet parents know that dogs have super sensitive noses. They can pick up smells and scents that we humble humans would never detect. Now a new study found that dogs can smell whether someone is positive for the COVID-19 virus by simply sniffing human sweat samples.
The study, conducted at community centers in Paris and published in the journal Plos One, discovered that properly trained dogs could detect positive COVID-19 cases in over 97 percent of instances.
This means that dogs could be more accurate than rapid COVID tests when it comes to detecting positive cases.
Dogs Can Detect Asymptomatic COVID Cases Too
Digging into the details of the study brings up even more impressive news. When faced with asymptomatic infections — which means humans who show no visible symptoms of COVID — the dogs were nearly one hundred perfect accurate in sniffing out the cases.
This sort of detection could prove to be immensely helpful in picking up on positive COVID cases before someone who’s positive but doesn’t have any symptoms goes out and about in the community and potentially infects other people.
Part of the reason dogs are so adept at smelling out cases is due to their hyper sensitive noses. While the average human’s nose contains around six million olfactory receptors, dogs can posses as many as 300 million receptors.
While it remains to be seen if there’s a way of introducing COVID sniffer dogs into daily situations, such as at airports and large public events, the news of the Plos One study isn’t the first time that our canine pals have proved to be of great benefit during the pandemic.
As we’ve reported before, dogs also play an important role as comforting therapy companions while younger children receive vaccinations. You may also want to check out some of the other, stranger jobs dogs can do with their amazing noses!
Do you think you could train your dog to sniff out positive COVID cases? Do you think trained dogs should help detect the virus at airports and large gatherings? Tell us all about it in the comments below!
