Forget Covid tests, just get a dog to sniff you instead! Man’s best friend is more accurate AND quicker than traditional swabs, experts suggest

A dog’s nose can be faster and more accurate at detecting Covid than rapid antigen and PCR testing, even in cases where humans show no symptoms and there isn’t enough virus to be detected by scientific methods.

Researchers from the University of California at Santa Barbara and BioScent conducted a meta-analysis of 29 studies conducted by more than 400 scientists from more than 30 countries. The studies included 31,000 samples that showed that trained dogs could sniff out very low concentrations of odors associated with Covid-19 infections.

In 84 percent of dog studies, dogs were able to determine more accurately who had and who did not have Covid than medical tests.

Tommy Dickey, a university professor who led the study, said: ‘They can detect the equivalent of one drop of an odorous substance in 10.5 Olympic swimming pools.

“For perspective, this is about three orders of magnitude better than with scientific instruments.”

During training, dogs are exposed to different scents using a ‘scent wheel’ to desensitize them to irrelevant scents they may encounter during the search

Scarlett, a two-year-old yellow Labrador, and Rizzo, her co-worker, are two dogs who can smell Covid

Dogs have nearly 300 million olfactory cells in their noses, compared to just six million in humans. In addition, they have separate sets of nostrils, one for inflow and one for outflow, and a third of their brains are devoted purely to interpreting smell, compared to just five percent of a human’s brain. Their superior sense of smell allows them to pick up scents that are undetectable by humans.

When a person has Covid, they produce unique volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which the dog must soak up with socks worn by previously tested Covid individuals.

To train the dogs, researchers exposed them to different scents using a “scent wheel” to desensitize them to irrelevant scents they might encounter while searching.

To detect the virus in humans, dogs sniffed their ankles and were trained to sit next to the person if they detected the virus.

In some cases, dogs were able to recognize Covid in presymptomatic and asymptomatic patients who did not have enough virus to show up on a manufactured test. Some dogs could also smell sweat samples in a tube and sit down if they discovered a positive case.

“The effectiveness of the trained sniffer dog method is comparable to or in some cases superior to the real-time RT-PCR test and the RAG test,” the study concluded.

Dickey and Heather Junqueira, of Bioscent, said the study showed that trained sniffer dogs are “equally and often more effective” than Covid antigen tests people use at home, as well as PCR tests used in medical settings.

Canine Covid testing is also non-intrusive and does not have the environmental impact of many single-use plastics. The dogs complete the test in seconds and are able to scan large groups of people at once.

Dickey said: ‘One of the authors we quote in the paper commented that the RT-PCR test is no longer the gold standard, it’s the dog, and they’re so fast.

“They can give you a yes or no in seconds if they smell you directly.”

Scent hounds such as beagles, basset hounds and coonhounds are good candidates for the job, but the studies showed that a wide variety of dogs, including puppies, senior dogs, males, females, purebreds and mixed breeds, were all effective Covid detectives.

In one study, a pit bull terrier labeled a ‘problem dog’ after mistreatment was found to be successful in detecting Covid.

The training required for the dogs is a minimum of eight weeks, and Dr. Cynthia Otto, director of the Penn Vet Working Dog Center at the University of Pennsylvania, previously told NBC it’s tricky to train dogs to detect Covid in the real world.

She said, “The ideal — and I’d consider it the holy grail — is for the dog to just stand there, a person walks by, and they say, ‘Yeah, no, yes, no, yes, no.’

“It could be done eventually, but making sure it happens with all the proper controls and quality assurance and safety – it’s a big step. I haven’t seen anyone suggest making that transition in a scientific and safe way.”

The research has been published in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine.