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Covid Detection Dogs – Oct 2020

Members may have heard a report on Radio 4 about dogs being used to detect covid – even in asymptomatic carriers.

The report was from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine but the dogs were – of course – associated with the charity medical detection dogs who have twice in recent years provided talks about their work to Banbury Rotary Club.

You can read more about this work on either the medical detection dogs website here or the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine here.

Basically the aim is that COVID-19 detection dogs are able to passive screen, i.e. without physical contact, any individual, including those who are asymptomatic, and indicate to dog handlers whether they have detected the COVID-19 virus. This will then be confirmed by a medical test.  The results are extremely promising and the dogs can be trained within a couple of months.

The researchers are looking for volunteers who are unfortunate enough to contract covid to provide samples that can be used to train the dogs.  Details of this are provided here.