Trained Dogs Can Sniff Out Covid Positive Samples With 96% Accuracy: Study

"This is not a simple thing we're asking the dogs to do," says Cynthia Otto, senior author on the work and director of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine Working Dog Center.

A proof-of-concept investigation published today in the journal PLOS ONE suggests that specially trained detection dogs can sniff out COVID-19-positive samples with 96 per cent accuracy. "This is not a simple thing we're asking the dogs to do," says Cynthia Otto, senior author on the work and director of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine Working Dog Center. "Dogs have to be specific about detecting the odour of the infection, but they also have to generalize across the background odors of different people: men and women, adults and children, people of different ethnicities and geographies." In this initial study, researchers found the dogs could do that, but training must proceed with great care and, ideally, with many samples. The findings are feeding into another investigation that Otto and colleagues have dubbed "the T-shirt study," in which dogs are being trained to discriminate between the odours of COVID-positive, -negative, and -vaccinated individuals based on the volatile organic compounds they leave on a T-shirt worn overnight.