Czech dog trainers say canines can sniff out Covid-19 with an astonishing 95% success rate.
The Czech team of expert dog trainers are working overtime on limited funding to conduct their research at an animal centre in a mountain village of the Central European country.
Three dogs – Renda, Cap, and Laky – are sent to sniff in six vessels and detect which one contains Covid. All contain pieces of cloth, one of which has been rubbed against the skin of a Covid positive case while the others are from negative donors or fake samples.
The training team says that the dogs find the correct sample in 96% of cases, and follows a similar project in Finland’s Helsinki Airport where trainers have taught dogs to detect the virus on passengers.
“The study is designed to verify dogs’ ability to detect COVID-19 and generate a method enabling the use of trained dogs in combatting the pandemic,” project head Gustav Hotovy told AFP, “The method should also work with other diseases, even more lethal than COVID-19.”
The team says they would like to work with their counterpart researchers in France and Finland, and the Czech project is strapped for cash and relies on dedicated overtime work from trainers.
