Scent dog identification of samples from Covid-19 patients – a pilot study | Hacker News Reader

Scent dog identification of samples from Covid-19 patients – a pilot study

bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com

27 pointshelloworld18 comments

This seems like a much more useful screening method than taking people’s forehead temperature at the door. Plus, you can have a dog wander around performing constant passive screening.

The study seems to have been conducted on prepared samples of saliva, so not sure if that would translate to working in the field.

I wonder if this puts dogs at risk for contracting or spreading the virus.

Yes, the paper makes clear that the risk of dogs contracting the virus is a major problem to solve - especially since a symptom may be loss of smell! No reports yet of dogs spreading covid though.

AFAIK most dogs can't get Corona (for now). Dogs that have tested positive for corona are rare. There is no report from Dog to human infection.

Rare, but this method is asking them to smell saliva samples all day. That’s a level of exposure very few dogs would have.

6% error rate is kinda high imho if this becomes the main method for airports etc, given the possible consequences of testing positive at customs.

6% seems amazing if you can enable mass screenings at, for example, schools.

As for consequences, you’d presumably be isolated until a secondary test could confirm the results. That’s better than a 14 day quarantine for everyone coming into a region, as many places are “requiring” in the US.

First positive case at a school is gonna have a lot of people sent home.

Our school it was. The entire classroom The teacher All secondary teachers / aids that kid interacted with. Possibly the kids the secondary personal interacted with. After 14 days everyone allowed back. Repeat each time a kid gets sick.

So with high false positives, everyone would be in quarantine perpetually.

General opinion was school would open, then very quickly get shut down.

Finally school just went 100% virtual. Except teachers have to come in and teach virtual lessons. Oh and they have to wear a mask while teaching lessons to the virtual audience. This is for kindergarten. So parents will have to be with kid 100% of the time or it’s all a waste.

It doesn't have to be the only method. You could combine it with a slower method, so something like:

1) Dog positive -> straight to full quarantine

2) Dog negative -> self-isolate until pathology tests come back

3) Pathology positive -> back to quarantine

4) Pathology negative -> free to run in the world