Can dogs sniff out coronavirus? Yes, if they are trained enough. A lot of research has been done around pets and coronavirus. In the early months of the pandemic, there were doubts whether dogs can get infected or spread the deadly infection to their owners. But that possibility was dismissed later on. Now a new study has made another interesting finding regarding dogs and coronavirus. A German veterinary university found out that dogs with a few days of training can identify people infected with COVID-19. A pilot study of this research was public in BMC Infectious Diseases by the University Veterinary Medicine Hannover. Can Pet Cats and Dogs Get Coronavirus From Humans? Here’s Everything You Should Know About Human to Animal Transmission of COVID-19.

A team of researchers trained eight dogs from the German armed forced for about five days and it worked with great success. These dogs were made to sniff the saliva of more than 1,000 people, a cluster of both healthy and infected. The dogs identified the coronavirus infected with a 94% success rate. The UK Government had launched similar trails in May to see if dogs can sniff out the infections. The professors involved in the study has even uploaded a video on their findings of the study.

Watch The Video Here:

Dogs are known to have a powerful sense of smell, which is almost 1,000 times better than humans. So their potential in the medical field is huge says another professor Dr Holger Volk. He said, "We know for a very long time that dogs have been used in a lot of walks of life, but for medical detection, it's a novel at the end of the day." He stressed on the potential these canines could have to detect the diseased from the non-diseased patients. This is just a pilot study, so more intensive research needs to be done in the direction.

If that's a great success, then it could help in identifying the potentially infected patients in public areas such as airports, events and the borders to prevent further spread of the virus. According to the researchers, their next step will be to train the dogs to differentiate between coronavirus and other diseases, such as influenza.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 25, 2020 10:17 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).