Dogs sniff Covid-19 in Germany, smell disease with 80% accuracy

In Germany, a project is active to teach dogs to smell the coronavirus. At the moment they succeed at 80%, in a few weeks the definitive results

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Some countries are experimenting with the use of dogs to sniff out the coronavirus in patients. Now Germany is also joining, which has started a project born from the collaboration between the army and the veterinary university of Hanover.

It is not new that some specially trained dogs are able to track down diseases. These are capable of detecting the presence of explosives or drugs, but also of sniffing various tumors or the impending hypoglycemia of diabetics.

Now we try to use the same technique also to "find" the presence of Covid-19. The United Kingdom was the first to start an experiment in this regard.

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Now a similar program has also started in Germany. Here was born the idea of a research project in collaboration between Hannove University of Veterinary Medicinere the center of Bundeswehr training (run by the army) in Ulmen. Service dogs are usually trained here for different types of operations including flooding or forest fires.

They participate in the new project 10 dogs of different breeds: German Shepherds, Spaniels and Retrievers, all busy learning to detect the SARS -CoV-2 virus.

So far, dogs have sniffed saliva samples from infected people where the viruses had been chemically rendered harmless. After successfully completing this series of experiments, the next obstacle to overcome will be that of smell the active coronavirus in human saliva.

"With a success rate of around 80%, the Ulmen researchers are well on their way to successfully continuing the project," a spokesman for the Bundeswehr dog school told the German newspaper Berliner Zeitung.

Expectations are high at the moment and what has been achieved so far is good. To have reliable and definitive results, however, you will have to wait a few more weeks.

Fonti: Federal Government / Berliner Zeitung