May 4, 2020 / By Chris Ciaccia | Fox News
Nearly two months after dogs started being trained to sniff out COVID-19 in the U.K., a similar program is coming to the U.S.
A program from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine is testing to see if dogs, which have 50 times the number of smell receptors that humans have (300 million to 6 million), are able to sniff out COVID-19 positive patients, especially those that are asymptomatic.
“Scent detection dogs can accurately detect low concentrations of volatile organic compounds, otherwise known as VOCs, associated with various diseases such as ovarian cancer, bacterial infections, and nasal tumors. These VOCs are present in human blood, saliva, urine or breath,” said University of Pennsylvania professor Dr. Cynthia Otto, in a statement. “The potential impact of these dogs and their capacity to detect COVID-19 could be substantial. This study will harness the dog’s extraordinary ability to support the nation’s COVID-19 surveillance systems, with the goal of reducing community spread.”
