A fundraising campaign has been set up to train dogs to learn the smell of Covid-19 and play a vital role in stopping the spread of the disease.
Experts at Medical Detection Dogs – which already does pioneering work in cancer research and diabetes detection – believe dogs can smell coronavirus and could help to screen people so that limited NHS tests are only used where needed.
The charity, based outside Milton Keynes, has set up a fundraising page online here to raise the £1,000,000 needed to carry out the potentially life-saving work.
Working with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Durham University, Medical Detection Dogs think man’s best friend could learn the smell of coronavirus within six weeks to provide a rapid, non-invasive diagnosis.
The charity said: ‘Dogs are one of the world’s greatest biosensors, capable of detecting odours associated with drugs, explosives and food and are now being used in practice for public health.
‘In light of the recent COVID-19 outbreak, there is a chance that we could use dogs as a rapid diagnostic screen to detect infected individuals and we need your help to get this project off the ground.
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‘This work could be revolutionary in the fight against Covid-19 and to combat this pandemic.’
As well as cancer and Parkinson’s disease, the team of researchers and scientists have discovered that dogs can detect the presence of malaria in human odour ‘with a high degree of accuracy’ – even in people who have no symptoms, the charity said.
Dr Claire Guest, CEO and Co-Founder of Medical Detection Dogs, said: ‘In principle, we’re sure that dogs could detect Covid-19. We are now looking into how we can safely catch the odour of the virus from patients and present it to the dogs.
‘The aim is that dogs will be able to screen anyone, including those who are asymptomatic and tell us whether they need to be tested. This would be fast, effective and non-invasive and make sure the limited NHS testing resources are only used where they are really needed.’
The money will be used to collect odour samples from patients infected with coronavirus as well as a sample group who do on have the virus.
These samples will be given to five dogs that are already trained in detecting conditions through smell. If their training with Covid-19 is successful, the dogs could be deployed to airports or public spaces in order to provide non-invasive triage screening for the deadly infection.
‘These dogs can screen up to 750 people per hour and would support ongoing efforts to test for Covid-19,’ the charity said.
‘Once we have trained the first dogs and have set training protocols, we could engage other agencies, at home and abroad, to increase the number of working teams.
‘Long Term: These dogs would also be in service at ports of entry later in the year, and for community surveys in the event that any country experiences a second wave of Covid-19.’
Medical Detection Dogs has made it clear that it has not yet been proved that Covid-19 has a distinctive odour, but it believes that if it does, the charity’s dogs will be able to detect it.
Any unspent funds raised will be donated to the Covid-19 Response Fund, the charity said.
Find out more by visiting the fundraising page here.
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