Dogs & Covid-19

Researchers at EARA member the University of Helsinki, Finland, have successfully trained dogs to detect Covid-19 in human samples using their sense of smell.

The university’s veterinary and human medicine faculties have joined forces to retrain scent detection dogs - used to spot diseases such as cancer - to detect Covid-19 positive urine samples, so far with high levels of success.

“It was fantastic to see how fast the dogs took to the new smell", says research leader Anna Hielm-Björkman.

The group will now move on to a larger trial of patient samples before the test is used in a clinical setting, with the aim to use the dogs in places such as care homes, community hospitals or airports.