*A new study by a German veterinary university found that dogs with only one week of training were able to identify individuals infected with the novel coronavirus.
According to the study, conducted by the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, properly trained dogs were able to sniff out the potentially deadly disease in the saliva of more than 1,000 people who were either healthy or infected, with a success rate of 94 percent, PEOPLE reports.
“Within randomized and automated 1012 sample presentations, dogs achieved an overall average detection rate of 94% with 157 correct indications of positive, 792 correct rejections of negative, 33 false positive and 30 false negative indications,” the authors of the study shared.
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“Dogs devote lots of brainpower to interpreting smells. They have more than 100 million sensory receptor sites in the nasal cavity as compared to 6 million in people,” according to VCA Animal Hospitals. “The area of the canine brain devoted to analyzing odors is about 40 times larger than the comparable part of the human brain. In fact, it’s been estimated that dogs can smell anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 times better than people.”
They added, “Unlike humans, dogs have an additional olfactory tool that increases their ability to smell. The organ serves as a secondary olfactory system designed specifically for chemical communication.”
“We think that this works because the metabolic processes in the body of a diseased patient are completely changed,” Maren von
Von Koeckritz-Blickwede says the next step is to train dogs to differentiate COVID-19 samples from other diseases.
WATCH:
German sniffer dogs can detect COVID-19 in people – with success rate of 94%. pic.twitter.com/aS8lqwwDpK
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 27, 2020
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