‘Dogs can detect Covid better than RT-PCR’
Dogs have hundreds of millions of olfactory receptors, compared to roughly five to six million for humans, and a third of their brains is devoted to interpreting smells
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NEW DELHI: Trained scent dogs exhibit a remarkable ability to detect COVID-19 infections with higher accuracy and efficiency compared to conventional RT-PCR tests, according to a review of studies. This promises quicker results and also holds the potential to substantially reduce diagnostic costs, said researchers.
In the last two years, 29 peer-reviewed studies that include more than 400 scientists from over 30 countries and 31,000 samples highlighted dogs’ ability to detect the virus and its variants, said Tommy Dickey, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California (UC) Santa Barbara, US.
Dickey and collaborator Heather Junqueira from BioScent, Inc. noted that the collective research demonstrates that trained scent dogs are “as effective and often more effective” than the antigen tests and even the gold-standard RT-PCR tests.
According to the study, published in the Journal of Osteopathic Medicine, dogs can not only detect the virus faster, they can do so in a non-intrusive manner, and without the environmental impact that comes with single-use plastics.
Dogs have hundreds of millions of olfactory receptors, compared to roughly five to six million for humans, and a third of their brains is devoted to interpreting smells. This enables them to detect very low concentrations of odours associated with COVID infections, they said.
“They can detect the equivalent of one drop of an odorous substance in 10.5 Olympic-sized swimming pools. For perspective, this is about three orders of magnitude better than with scientific instrumentation,” Dickey said.
In some cases, dogs were able to detect COVID in pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic patients whose viral load was too low for conventional tests to work. They can also distinguish the virus from other respiratory viruses such as those of the common cold or flu.
“They’re much more effective. In fact, one of the authors that we quoted in the paper commented that the RT-PCR test is not the gold standard anymore. It’s the dog,” Dickey said. “And they’re so quick. They can give you the yes or no within seconds if they’re directly smelling you,” he added.
