Dubai Airport Recruits Dogs to Sniff Out COVID-19 Cases

The world is fighting tooth and nail to battle the pandemic and coming up with all kinds of preventive measures to limit the spread of coronavirus. In one such attempt, Dubai has put to work dogs at the Dubai International Airport. 

These dogs have been specially trained to sniff out travellers and test samples at the airport. Officials in Dubai have now begun taking sweat samples from travellers upon arrival to put under the noses of these specially trained canines. Dogs have a greater olfactory senses&mdashupto 1,00,000 times more sensitive&mdashas compared to humans, and can also detect diseases such as cancer. 

The country opened to tourists in July and the current prerequisites include producing a negative coronavirus test done prior to 96 hours of travelling. With this latest addition, all arriving travellers must be tested for coronavirus and show negative proof for entry.

The &lsquopossibly-infected&rsquo travellers enter a designated testing area to give a sweat sample via a swab from where the trained dogs are presented with the sample in another isolated room. The sweat samples are taken from travellers&rsquo armpits and are placed in steel containers. These containers are designed in such a manner that they allow a dog&rsquos snout to fit in without disturbing the sample. 

The Dubai airport is currently the only one to adopt COVID-19 sniffing dogs in real time. These dogs also do not come in direct contact of those who might be possibly affected. Additional police force has also been deployed to supervise the process.

According to reports, the K-9 unit trained dogs have been conducting over 400 tests in the past few weeks. The test results have had a 92 per cent accuracy rate and take less than a minute.