Dogs Detect COVID-19 At European Airport With Near Perfect Accuracy
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For some time now, dogs have been said to be able to spy out the corona virus. However, these dogs weren't deployed as quickly as hoped. It took months of research and training to teach these dogs the behavior, and finally, there is some promising news in these uncertain times.
COVID-sniffing dogs are now on the program at Helsinki Airport in Finland. They are the first dogs to track the virus at airports in Europe and the second dogs in the world. Their accuracy is almost 100%!
Greeting the new working dogs
The Airport employs four dogs Sniffing COVID-19 in addition to the dogs already working there to spy out other dangers. When two of the dogs are working, the other two take a break. After all, working dogs deserve as much free time as humans.
In the initial phase, testing is optional and is mainly aimed at people traveling internationally. The test is simple and takes a few minutes at most. Each person is asked to dab their neck with a cloth. Then the wipe is placed in a glass in a separate area for safety and placed near glasses with different scents.
If the dog smells the virus, they will alert someone by screaming, lying down, or scratching the glass. The passenger must then go through an additional free test to confirm the dog's results. So far, tests have shown that the accuracy of these dogs is close to 100%.
These dogs can also detect COVID-19 in a significantly smaller pool of molecules than other tests. You only need about 100 molecules to detect the virus. Laboratory equipment typically needs closer to 18 million!
How will this affect the future?
While Helsinki Airport is only the second airport in the world to use these smart canines, other locations could be added soon. Australia, France and Germany are all working on similar systems. Training for it took a while so it's amazing to finally see it in action.
"It looks very promising," said Anna Hielm-Björkman from the University of Helsinki. "If it works, it could prove to be a good screening method in other places."
It takes less than a minute for the dogs to sniff the sample. So these dogs could be beneficial for any places where a lot of people enter, e.g. B. for hospitals and events.
This is just the beginning of using dogs to slow the spread of COVID-19. If all goes well, these dogs could make a huge difference in this world and make testing for the virus a lot more amenable. Hopefully we'll see more information about these hard working dogs in the future!
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