BY: Samantha Bartlett

The Penn Vet COVID-19 Research Innovation Fund is backing a pilot program to use scent detection dogs to detect COVID-19 positive people. The University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine will train three dogs initially to imprint on COVID-19 positive saliva and urine samples in a lab setting. Once they feel the dogs have learned to specify the odor, the researchers will test if these dogs can detect the scent in infected people. The Penn Vet researchers are working in collaboration the Untied States Army.  

Scent detection dogs have already shown they can detect diseases such as ovarian cancer and other specific cancers as well as specific bacterial infections. If successful, these dogs will provide another tool as officials attempt to implement testing and surveillance to contain the virus that causes COVID-19 particularly for finding asymptomatic carriers. 

The researchers are not worried that dogs cannot detect the disease, but are more concerned with confounding factors such as does the coronavirus smell like the influenza virus or other viruses. It will take exposing the dogs to a lot of samples from different people to determine if the virus is unique enough to find with appropriate sensitivity and specificity. Once they determine if dogs can in fact detect coronavirus and do so successfully in a room full of people, they estimate it will take 4-6 months for trainers to bring other dogs up to speed.