French sniffer dogs detect Covid-19 with 94% accuracy 2020
Sniffer dogs could be deployed to test for Covid-19 within weeks if the government gives the go-ahead, according to a veterinary professor. Trained animals can be taught to respond to sweat samples from infected people to a 94% accuracy rate in as little as two weeks, Professor Dominique Grandjean, of the Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire d’Alfort, told Connexion.
“We have had the idea of testing using dogs, developed a proof of concept, done the experiments, and it works,” he said. “It is now up to the government to decide if it wants to take it further.” Prof Grandjean said many in the medical profession had been sceptical about the idea but his multinational and multidisciplinary research group had pressed on. “On his visit to Lebanon in August, President Macron was shown a demonstration and was impressed,” he said. “It was after that that we were contacted by the government for more information.”
But a ministry of health spokeswoman said there were no definitive plans as yet to use dogs to test for Covid. “It is an experimental programme, and will need to be verified by our experts,” she said. In a follow up email she pointed out that a scheme to use dogs to test for cancers in France had still not been approved after several years, and was in a test stage looking at reliability, standardisation and the ability to put in place appropriate infrastructure and organisation for implementation.
But trained police or customs service sniffer dogs, used for explosive or firearm detection or finding illegal drugs, and search-and-rescue or cadaver dogs from fire brigade could be trained to react to Covid-19 in weeks, Prof Grandjean said. “You need to have good control samples to train the dogs with, and that will involve people like us providing them,” he said.
“In the civilian population, there are dog trainers who are already regulated to train dogs to look for explosives and they could train dogs for Covid-19 detection, and train other dog handlers in what to do. I can imagine dogs being used by, for example, sports federations, where football players or rugby players have to have several tests a week, as well as airports or train stations.” Military or customs dogs could also be trained and deployed rapidly if there was the will to do so.
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It normally takes between four and six months for a so-called “green” dog, which has not been trained as a sniffer, to be trained from scratch, so building up a population of several hundred trained dogs could take time. Sniffer dogs are already used in Lebanon and in the UAE, while a number of other countries, including Australia and Brazil, are considering using them. Because around 11% of the population are very afraid of dogs, and because some people refuse to allow dogs to touch them for cultural
reasons, it is unlikely we will see dogs walking down a line of people in airports, Prof Grandjean said.
Instead, cotton pads placed under armpits for as little as a minute, or even traces left by someone putting on and taking off a T-shirt, can be used as samples for the dogs to sniff. The average detection rate of 94% is comparable to other testing methods, and there have been cases where dogs were able to detect the disease at such an early stage that conventional tests would have missed it, he said.
“At the moment, when a dog detects coronavirus on a person, it would be the same as if they test positive through conventional tests – they are advised to self-isolate for at least 10 days,” he said. Following the results of the tests and related studies at the University Hospital of Strasbourg, using air samples gathered using so-called “air sponges”, the Académie Vétérinaire de France and the Académie Nationale de Médecine both issued statements calling for research to continue.
And, despite the shop’s sale of food, it will very likely need to close by the end of today, as its book aisles will no longer be accessible to the public.
Book publisher, writer and bookseller unions le Syndicat national de l’édition, le Conseil permanent des écrivains, and the Syndicat national de la librairie française, have called on the Prime Minister to classify books as “essential items”.
In a press release, they said: “Local bookshops, which cover our whole country, are organised and well-equipped [to manage Covid]. They are perfectly capable of welcoming readers in the context of a new lockdown, in safe and sanitary conditions.”
Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has also appeared to support the move, telling new source BFMTV yesterday: “Do not buy from Amazon. Amazon is the death of all our bookshop and the lives of our neighbourhoods.”
Culture Minister Roselyn Bachelot has encouraged the public to use “click and collect” services that exist, if they wish to buy a book. This involves buying the book direct from the bookshop online, and then coming to collect it in person - without necessarily going into the shop.