British Scientists Begin Training Dogs To Detect COVID-19 Patients

Ilustrasi foto (Altino Dantas / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Knowing the presence of positive patients for sure is the key to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. The mass test, which is the basic procedure, cannot be carried out by all countries. This condition prompted British scientists to experiment with dogs to detect the presence of the virus.

Reported by Independent, the scientists from Charity Medical Detection Dogs began to develop an experiment so that positive patients with COVID-19 could be detected by the smell of bloodhounds. Charity Medical Detection Dog itself is a charity.

In this detection effort, they are working with the London School of Hygiene, Tropical Medicine, and Durham University. Scientists believe the dogs can be trained for six weeks after they find a safe way to introduce dogs to the smell of the coronavirus.

Hope is very open. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), dogs are animals that cannot be infected with COVID-19 and cannot transmit the virus to humans. Therefore, dogs can be trained to track someone who is positive for COVID-19.

The charity's CEO and Co-Founder, Dr. Claire Guest said, "dogs that later track COVID-19 will be trained in the same way as dogs that have been trained to detect diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's and bacterial infections by sniffing samples in the training room and showing when they found them . "

This is reinforced by the fact that dogs can detect symptoms of changes in body temperature, so they have the potential to know someone who is experiencing symptoms caused by COVID-19. "After being trained, dogs can also be used to identify travelers who are suspected of being infected with COVID-19, as well as detect those in other public spaces," he added.

Claire is optimistic about this idea. However, as explained above, they must first find ways how dogs can safely detect the smell of a COVID-19 positive patient. "The goal is for dogs to screen anyone, including those who are asymptomatic, and tell us if they need to be tested."

In line with Claire, optimism was also shown by Professor James Logan, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who said: Our previous work has shown that dogs can detect odors from humans with malaria infection with very high accuracy above WHO standards for diagnostics. .

For this reason, he believes that other diseases such as COVID-19 can also be detected through body odor, so there is an opportunity for dogs to detect it. The hope is that if dogs can detect COVID-19, then this can be a breakthrough that will not only have an impact in the short term, but also in the long term. And this can help many countries to prevent the emergence of the same disease for the second time.