Pakistan to use sniffer dogs to detect COVID-19 infected person at airport

Pakistan is going to use sniffer dogs to detect persons with COVID-19 at the airport as it is revealed in a study that dogs can detect coronavirus in humans five days before they develop symptoms.

Islamabad: Pakistan has deployed Sniffer dogs at the New Islamabad International Airport in a bid to identify COVID-19 infected passengers arriving from abroad.

Last week, the clearance for the deployment of the dogs was given in a meeting to review enforcement of lockdown during the Eid holidays, the Gulf News reported.

According to a study published in the University of Helsinki, dogs can detect coronavirus in humans five days before they develop symptoms.

The Pakistani authorities took the decision in this regard after several fake reports of COVID-19 were produced by passengers upon arrival. Later, they were found to be Covid positive.

In March, reports had emerged that researchers in Switzerland have launched a training trial to see if Sniffer dogs can find out people infected with COVID-19, Xinhua reported.

Three dogs are being trained by researchers from Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) for four weeks by exposing them to samples of sick and healthy people, after which the dogs will go through a sweat-sniffing test to see if they can identify infected individuals.

Initial results from France, Germany and several other countries have shown that trained Sniffer dogs are able to recognize people with COVID-19 infections.

Dr. Manuel Schibler, physician of the Infectious Diseases Department at HUG had said that Sniffer dogs could be an inexpensive, relatively simple and friendly alternative of screening methods currently used for slowing down COVID-19 transmission.