Dogs sniffing out coronavirus could be deployed at airports by Christmas, claims professor running trial

The Duchess of Cornwall speaking with staff on a visit to the Medical Detection Dogs' training centre
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Robert Jobson9 September 2020

The head of a trial to see if dogs can be trained to sniff out Covid-19 infection has said that the first animals could be deployed at airports by Christmas.

Professor James Logan is leading a study to see if dogs, which can already be trained to spot diseases such as cancer, malaria and Parkinson’s, can detect the signs of coronavirus without the need for laboratory testing.

Another academic involved in the programme, Professor Steve Lindsay, from the Department of Biosciences at Durham University, said: “If we can show that our trained dogs can identify people carrying the virus, but who are not sick, it will be a game changer.

“We will then be able to scale-up the use of dogs at ports of entry to identify travellers entering the country with the virus. This could be very important to help prevent a second wave of the epidemic.”

He was speaking as the Duchess of Cornwall visited the charity Medical Detection Dogs, which is working on the trial with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), to see the animals in action.

The trial is appealing for more volunteers to come forward by donating their sweaty socks to help train the dogs.

Prof Logan, head of the department of disease control at LSHTM, said dogs can detect malaria in people “with very high accuracy”.

The research involves getting volunteers - both positive and negative for Covid - to wear a pair of nylon socks, a face mask and a T shirt for several hours and then donate them to the study.

Researchers isolate the chemicals given off by the volunteers, and send them to the charity to see if the dogs can be trained to respond to them.

However they are short of volunteers with Covid. “We need 675 negative samples, and 325 positive samples. Although it does not sound like a lot, it is hard because the numbers [of people with Covid] came down in the UK very quickly.”

So far they have only have 10 positive samples.

“If [the dogs] can do it really well then we will be looking to deploy this potentially at airports. Each individual dog can screen up to 250 people per hour. There is obviously already a model for having dogs at airports for drugs and explosives.

“You could have them at security for when people are leaving the country, so that air travel is safer and you give people confidence to travel again, but also incoming aircraft where people might be bringing the disease back in the country. People could be told to quarantine without having unnecessary blanket quarantines.”

He said it was too early to say whether the trial was working.

However he added: “In other parts of the world where they are doing similar things, anecdotally there are some positive results. Also, a lot of people have contacted us including medical professionals to say, ‘If I walk into a Covid ward I can smell it.’

And individuals who have had it have said, ‘I could smell it on myself’ or ‘My partner told me they could smell something’. If it is that strong an odour it should be very easy for dogs.

“I think there is something there, and it will potentially be very impactful. But it is early days.”

Dogs could also be used at train stations, sports stadiums and workplaces, he said.

“Once we’ve got all the samples, it will take about eight weeks to train all the dogs that we have. Then we would be looking to deploy within weeks after that. We are still hoping that we would have the first dogs deployed before Christmas.”