What makes coronavirus seem dangerous? Asymptomatic people.
In the early days of COVID-19, detection was the key to stop this virus. But as the graph of death and infection escalated, so did the dreadfulness of this virus.
The symptoms of COVID-19 are so common that detection was difficult, but we hit rock bottom with the discovery of the asymptomatic nature of this virus. Asymptomatic people are the people who show no known symptoms and become silent carriers of the infection.
Here’s when dogs come into play. We all have heard about sniffing dogs, the dogs that detect people or things by their smell. On medical grounds, these dogs are used to identify people with a specific infection.
Obviously, not any dog can do that, but the organization named Medical Detection Dogs trains dogs to detect infections in people even before they show symptoms.
These dogs have successfully detected people with malaria, cancer, and Parkinson’s. These infections give off a specific odor that the dogs are trained to detect.
Good to have dogs by our side!
Training Procedure
The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), in collaboration with Medical Detection Dogs and Durham University, is working on training dogs to detect COVID-19 carriers.
Also Read: Tanzania-Based Organisation Is Training Rats To Detect Landmines And Diagnose Diseases
James Logan is the head researcher of the project. According to him, to detect COVID-19 at an early stage, it is crucial to take samples from only those people who do not show any symptoms. For other diseases, the infection was successfully detected at an early stage before the symptoms appeared.
They believe that the same can be possible for COVID-19.
Hopes From “The Super Six”
If this trial gets success, it will make the detection of virus fast and manageable.
A large number of people will be scanned without unnecessary invasion.
This will also reduce the dependency on test kits, and kits will only be used when really needed.
Image credits: Google Images
Source: Business Insider, Health Care Global, Indian Express
Find the blogger: @mitali_pk
This post is tagged under: dogs, sniffing dogs, coronavirus symptoms, coronavirus, coronavirus symptoms detection, COVID-19, COVID-19 control, dogs under training, the super six, infection, Iran, France, large groups of people, detect, asymptomatic, dogs detect coronivirus, detect covid 19 infection
