Ten specially-trained dogs are starting work at Helsinki Airport, using their noses to sniff out passengers with Covid-19.
It’s part of the City of Vantaa’s efforts to test new ways to reduce the spread of the virus, with the canine coronavirus detectors able to smell the virus with almost 100% accuracy during tests conducted by the University of Helsinki.
“We are among the pioneers. As far as we know no other airport has attempted to use canine scent detection on such a large scale against Covid-19” says Airport Director Ulla Lettijeff from Finavia.
“We are pleased with the city of Vantaa’s initiative. This might be an additional step forward on the way to beating Covid-19” she adds.
The dogs are able to identify the virus from a much smaller sample than the standard tests used by healthcare professionals - and need just 10-100 molecules to make a positive ID, compared to current tests which need 18 million molecules for an accurate analysis.
Passengers won’t come into direct contact with the dogs at the airport. Instead the dogs will work in a separate booth, and passengers will wipe their skin with a swab and drop it into a cup, which is given to the dog for sniffing. This method also helps protect the dog’s handler from any infections.
If a test result is positive, the passenger will be directed to a health information point at the airport.
So how do the dogs learn to sniff out coronavirus?
As News Now Finland reported back in May, researchers at the University of Helsinki were looking into whether dogs’ sense of smell could be a faster and more accurate test for coronavirus.
Scientists from the university’s medical and veterinary science departments joined forced to see if dogs can detect people infected with Covid-19 first by sniffing their urine. In the preliminary studies, trained dogs were able to differentiate between urine from someone infected with coronavirus, and a healthy person.
The dogs involved in the research had previously been trained to detect breast cancer and prostate cancer based on scent profiles, and Anna Hielm-Björkman Associate Professor of Animal Clinical Research at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, says at the start of each day the dogs just need to be ‘calibrated’ with treats to know which puzzle they’re working on that session: cancer or coronavirus.
“Dogs are very good at learning new things, and it really seemed the dogs we re-trained were happy to learn something new” she told us at the time.
In the University’s tests, researchers found the dogs were able to identify someone with coronavirus even before they began showing any clinical symptoms, and even before a normal test would come back with a positive result.
Almost all of the coronavirus dogs working at Helsinki Airport have prior experience in scent detecion, and four will be on duty at a time.
The time it takes each animal to successfully train to be a Covid-19 sniffer dog varies depending on its backgrounds. One of the team, an 8-year old greyhound mix called Kössi, picked up the skills successfully in just seven minutes.
In Finland scent dogs are regularly trained to identify mould in buildings, but are also used to sniff out cockroaches, bed bugs or other insect infestations. However, there is increasing awareness of their unique skills in clinical settings as well, where they’re being trained to identify the precursors for patients with chronic pain, and alert them in advance when they need to take medication.
