covid sniffing dogs an adorable line of defence

“during the nba bubble is really when we started researching, in earnest, how we could bring back fans safely into the arena,” matthew jafarian, miami heat’s executive vice president for business strategy, told cnn .

a k-9 handler stands with a specially trained dog that detects coronavirus in people at the american airlines arena prior to the nba basketball match between miami heat and the la clippers in miami, on january 28, 2021. – miami heat fans were able to watch their team’s game live for the first time at an nba game since the pandemic began in march of last year, thanks to dogs trained to detect covid-19. chandan khanna/afp via getty image

fans are asked to line up as the dogs walk past. if one of the dogs sits beside a guest, they will be refunded their ticket and denied entry to the stadium.

we’ve started with the covid sniffing dogs. 🐶 pic.twitter.com/mrzu6ilbd2

— lorenzo (@lorenzobutlerpr) january 27, 2021

“if you or anyone in your travel party is signaled by a canine, all members of the party will not be permitted to enter the arena,” the team released as part of the sniffer-dogs faq . if a guest has an aversion to coming into close contact with one of the dogs, they may take a rapid antigen test which takes approximately 45 minutes to process.

on top of the sniffer dogs, only a limited number of fans are allowed into the stadium to allow for social distancing, according to the heat’s covid safety protocol . fans are also asked to fill out a health questionnaire upon entry, masks are mandatory and concession stands are cashless.

dr. riad sarkis, a surgeon at the french st joseph university in beirut, and dominique grandjean, chief veterinarian at the national veterinary school of alfort in france (enva), began training dogs to detect covid in early 2020, according to arab news . in a proof-of-concept study published in plos one , dogs were presented with several pieces of gauze soaked in sweat – some from patients who had tested positive for covid-19 and some who had not. the success rate per dog ranged from 75 per cent to 100 per cent and the authors recommend more studies with a wider variation in sweat samples.

in one instance, a dog was reportedly able to detect covid even before conventional tests, according to data presented at an international k9 team meeting in november. however, this information was not peer-reviewed at the time.

kelley hall works with one-betta, a covid-19 sniffing dutch shepard, in a library on the florida international university campus on january 27, 2021 in miami, florida. joe raedle/getty images

a pilot study in germany trained eight detection dogs for a week to identify covid-19 samples in saliva. the dogs had an average detection rate of 94 per cent. in a total of 1012 samples, the dogs misidentified 33 negative samples and 30 positive samples.

researchers aren’t quite sure what the dogs are smelling, although it is believed that various flu and other illnesses cause the body to give off unique patterns of volatile organic compounds which dogs can detect, according to nature .

in addition to the american airlines arena, covid sniffing dogs have also been deployed at airports in finland and dubai. more studies and training initiatives are being conducted globally .

dogs have approximately 300 million scent receptors located in their nose, according to nature . compared to the five to six million receptors that humans have, dogs are able to detect minute differences in scents.

sniffer dogs are most well-known for detecting drugs and other contraband at airports and for finding humans in search and rescue operations. dogs can also be trained to find truffles , a culinary delicacy that is found near tree roots underneath the soil. other services provided by dogs’ noses include finding mould , termites , and invasive plants .

in the healthcare world, dogs seem to be adept at identifying various forms of cancer in their humans. in 2013, a case study detailed how a 75 year-old man visited a doctor because his pup was constantly licking an area behind the man’s ear. the doctor found an asymptomatic lesion and, upon further testing, found that it was malignant melanoma.

in 2019, researchers at bioscentdx trained three beagles to sniff out cancer, finding that the dogs were able to identify blood serum and samples from patients with lung cancer with more than 97 per cent accuracy. (the fourth beagle in the study, snuggles, did not take to the training.)

various other studies have had fairly impressive results in training dogs to detect colorectal cancer from patients’ breath and stool samples, prostate cancer from urine samples, lung cancer from breath and ovarian cancer from blood samples.

some organizations also claim to train dogs to detect low blood sugar in diabetic patients, however, they don’t seem to be as accurate as they are in identifying other smells. a study of eight patients who had type-1 diabetes and a service dog trained to detect hypoglycemia tracked how often the dogs alerted their owners to low blood sugar levels. over the course of the study, the dogs identified 36 per cent of the hypoglycemic events that occurred (recorded by a continuous glucose monitoring device) within an acceptable time frame (10 minutes before to 30 minutes after onset).

emjones@postmedia.com |  @jonesyjourn

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