Trained dogs can detect people who have COVID-19 with same accuracy as PCR test

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

Trained sniffer dogs can accurately detect airport passengers with COVID-19 to the same accuracy as a PCR test, reveals new research.

The dogs were more than 90 percent accurate in sniffing out people with the virus responsible for COVID-19, according to the results of a trial published in BMJ Global Health.

Researchers say using sniffer dogs as a method of detection is likely to be "especially valuable" - not only in the early stages of a pandemic when other resources might not yet be available - but also to help contain an ongoing pandemic.

Dogs have a very keen sense of smell and can pick up a scent at levels as low as one part per trillion, far exceeding any available mechanical techniques.

It is thought that they are able to detect distinct volatile organic compounds released during various metabolic processes in the body, including those generated by bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections.

Preliminary figures suggested that dogs can be trained within weeks to detect samples from patients infected with COVID-19, with a degree of accuracy comparable to that of a standard PCR nose and throat swab test.

While promising, the lab data results needed to be replicated in real-life conditions.

The Finnish research team trained four dogs to sniff out SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, in Spring 2020.

Each of the dogs had previously been trained to sniff out illicit drugs or dangerous goods or cancer.

To test the dogs’ detection skills, 420 volunteers provided four skin swab samples each.

The four dogs each sniffed the skin samples from 114 of the volunteers who had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on a PCR swab test and from 306 who had tested negative.

The samples were randomly presented to each dog over seven trial sessions.

Study co-author Professor Anu Kantele said: "Overall, the diagnostic accuracy of all samples sniffed was 92 percent: combined sensitivity - accuracy of detecting those with the infection -was 92 percent and combined specificity - accuracy of detecting those without the infection - was 91 percent..

"Only minor variation was seen among the dogs: the best performance reached 93 percent for sensitivity and 95 percent for specificity; the worst reached 88 percent for sensitivity and 90 percent for specificity.

"Some 28 of the positive samples came from people who had had no symptoms.

"Only one was incorrectly identified as negative and two weren’t sniffed, meaning that 25 of the 28 - just over 89 percent - were correctly identified as positive: the lack of symptoms didn’t seem to affect the dogs’ performance."

The four dogs were then put to work sniffing out 303 incoming passengers at Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport between September 2020 and April 2021. Each passenger also took a PCR swab test.

The PCR and sniffer results matched in 296 out of 303 (98 percent) of the real-life samples.

The dogs correctly identified the samples as negative in 296 out of 300 (99 percent) PCR negative swab tests and identified three PCR positive cases as negative.

After re-evaluation with clinical and serological data, one was judged to be SARS-CoV-2 negative, one SARS-CoV-2 positive, and one a likely post-infectious positive PCR test result.

Similarly, the dogs indicated four PCR negative cases as positive. These were all judged to be SARS-CoV-2 negative.

Because the prevalence of the virus among the airport passengers was relatively low at less than 0.5 percent, 155 samples from people who had tested positive on a PCR swab test were also presented to the dogs.

Prof Kantele, of Helsinki University Hospital and Faculty of Medicine, said: "The dogs correctly identified just under 99 percent of them as positive.

"Had these ‘spike’ samples been included in the real-life study, the dogs’ performance would have reached a sensitivity of 97 percent and a specificity of 99 percent.

"Based on these results, the researchers then calculated the proportion of true positive results (PPV) and the proportion of true negative results (NPV) in two hypothetical scenarios reflecting a population prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 of 40 percent and one percent.

"For the prevalence of 40 percent, they estimated a PPV of 88 percent and an NPV of 94.5 percent. This means that the information provided by the dog increases the chances of detection to around 90 percent.

"For a population prevalence of one percent, on the other hand, they estimated a PPV of just under 10 percent and an NPV of just under 100 percent.

"In both scenarios, the high NPV backs the use of sniffer dogs for screening, with the aim of excluding people who don’t need a PCR swab test."

She added: "Dogs could be used both in sites of high SARS-CoV-2 prevalence, such as hospitals - to prescreen patients and personnel, as well as in low prevalence sites, such as airports or ports.

”This could save both considerable time and resources."

She said a key finding was that the dogs were less successful at correctly identifying the alpha variant as they had been trained to detect the wild type.

Prof Kantele said: "This just goes to show how good dogs are at distinguishing between different scents.

“This observation is remarkable as it proves the scent dogs’ robust discriminatory power.

"The obvious implication is that training samples should cover all epidemiologically relevant variants.

"Our preliminary observations suggest that dogs primed with one virus type can in a few hours be retrained to detect its variants.”