In a Finnish study, researchers deployed four dogs to an airport to test their ability to detect travelers infected with the coronavirus.
A French study has already shown that . In a new scientific article published on May 16, 2022 in BMJ Global HealthFinnish researchers and the French Loic Desquilbet, from the Department of Biostatistics and Clinical Epidemiology (National Veterinary School of Alfort) demonstrate that canines can be successfully used in an international airport in order to fight against the spread of the coronavirus.
A solid triple-blind study
People infected with the coronavirus may be asymptomatic but still contagious, hence the need to deploy rapid and inexpensive means to detect them, unlike the PCR test. “Dogs are believed to detect distinct volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released by their hosts’ metabolic processes under various conditions“, in particular during infections, recalls this study. Detection can take place when a person is affected by Covid-19, a discovery underlined by French work.
The Finnish researchers wanted to provide new, extremely solid data to definitively establish the olfactory capacities of dogs in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. For this, they carried out a randomized, triple-blind study (the handler of the dog, the experimenter and the researcher in charge of data processing do not know which sample is positive) and a full-scale test at Helsinki-Vantaa airport. with four dogs.
The triple-blind protocol included four identical sets (for each animal) of 420 skin samples (gauze was swabbed on the neck, forehead and wrists) from 114 positive and 306 negative individuals (tested by PCR), presented randomly to dogs during seven work sessions. In addition, from the end of September 2020 until the end of April 2021, 303 travelers from Helsinki-Vantaa airport were indirectly “scanned” by the dogs. “The study was conducted in a cabi[…]
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