Medical Detection Dogs, a non-profit organisation in the UK to train dogs to detect diseases, is looking into training dogs to suss out Covid-19 patients in the coming months.

Dogs can smell diseases

Each disease is supposed to have a unique odour that the dogs are able to pick up, according to Medical Detection Dogs.

For example, the volatile organic compounds produced by malignant cells exude a scent that can be traced from cancer patients' breath and urine.

Medical Detection Dogs said that they have already trained dogs to detect cancers, Parkinson's disease, malaria and bacterial infections successfully.

They are planning to get some of these bio-detection dogs ready for Covid-19 most recently.

Dogs to detect Covid-19 in six weeks of intensive training

The non-profit said that it will be partnering with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Durham University to see how dogs can be trained to diagnose Covid-19 patients.

The three organisations have partnered before to train dogs to detect malaria and the accuracy of detection has been "extremely high".

The team has started preparations to train the dogs and they could be ready in six weeks, the non-profit has announced.

Claire Guest, co-founder of Medical Detection Dogs, said that the aim is to help spot asymptomatic patients in a "fast, effective and non-invasive" way to preserve the testing resources that the National Health Service in the UK has.

Besides diseases, the dogs can detect subtle changes in the temperature of the skin so they might be able to tell if someone has a fever.

If the research and training are conducted successfully, the dogs can be deployed to airports and public spaces to identify patients quickly to help with the containment of Covid-19, Professor Steve Lindsay at Durham University said.

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