Researchers from Finland rely on four-legged friends in the fight against the corona virus: A study suggests that dogs can sniff out the pathogen with their noses.
Helsinki - The coronavirus (* BW24 reported) continues to spread unhindered worldwide - according to the
Robert Koch Institute
(RKI), there are more than
481,000
people in Germany who have been proven to
have been infected
with the
coronavirus
.
The
government
in Berlin announced on Wednesday
a second partial lockdown * in November in
view of the rapidly increasing number of
corona cases
.
Chancellor Merkel
presented
the lockdown rules * that will come into force on November 2nd.
Science is also working hard to contain the
coronavirus
- for example the Tübingen biotech company Curevac, which is developing a vaccine against the coronavirus
A Finnish
research team from
the University of Helsinki
now examined whether
dogs
can reliably detect
the
corona virus
.
For the study, the
scientists had
three dogs
sniffing
at 2,200
passengers
at Helsinki Airport
- or rather a
swab
that had previously been wiped over the passenger's skin.
Coronavirus: Dogs surprisingly correct when detecting infections
The
result
was astounding: the
dogs
were able to
detect
a
corona infection
in
0.6 percent of
the passengers tested
- up to five days earlier than a Covid-19 test *.
The results of the dogs largely coincided with the results of the official corona tests *, which were carried out at Helsinki Airport at the same time.
The researchers performed
16,000 to 17,000
PCR tests and less than one percent of them were
positive
,
reported the Deputy Mayor of Vantaa
Timo Aronkyto
to representatives of the press.
Now the researchers still have to investigate whether the
dogs were
really
able to detect
all
corona infections
that were also confirmed by the corona tests.
The results should
To be presented at the end of 2020.
Dogs sniff out corona virus: German researchers are training animals for corona tests
The
scientists
had already been observed in the first wave Corona that
dogs
the
coronavirus
can correctly identify almost up to 100 percent.
Corona detection dogs are also
trained
in Germany
.
The
University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover (TiHo),
for example, presented the first results in July of this year.
For their study, the researchers had
sensitized
the
Bundeswehr
sniffer dogs
to the
coronavirus
.
After a week of training, the animals were able to correctly identify 94 percent among 1012 samples.
There are similar projects with sniffer dogs where they are used to
detect diseases
such as cancer or infection.
* BW24
is part of the Ippen-Digital network
