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Medical Detection Dogs and Covid-19

Back in those halycon pre-Covid-19 days Banbury Rotary used to have what we called “5th Friday Meetings” in  which included members partners could accompany them for an evening  meal and a talk. One memorable talk was given by the charity “Medical Detection dogs.

If I recall correctly they could be trained for two rather different roles:

  • diagnosis of a disease in a patient alerting medics to the presence of the condition – e.g. prostate cancer
  • management of diseases – alerting the patient to the need to amend their medication dosage  – e.g. diabetes

So – you may be interested to hear that the canine nose is now being investigated as a potential sniffer of Covid-19.

No swabs or needles or 2+ day waits for the results: just a friendly dog basically giving an immediate “Yes” or “No” response.

Obviously it’s early days to know whether Covid-19 induces a change in odour of humans that dogs can detect but we certainly wish them well in their efforts.

Click below to see the page on the Medical Detection Dogs site.