As a result of the positive outcome obtained during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Mérida Unit of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies (Cinvestav) will develop in the medium term a project for a “Dog training school for the biodetection of virally transmitted diseases”.
Dr. Victor Manuel Vidal Martinez, researcher of this unit, mentioned that during one month, two dogs sniffed 250 people daily, until reaching five thousand, and three individuals were detected infected by SARS-CoV-2, whose cases were confirmed by laboratory tests.
He added that this week he will take one of the dogs with Dr. Matilde Jiménez Coello, a specialist from the Regional Research Center “Dr Hideyo Noguchi” of the Autonomous University of Yucatán (Uady), to develop the project “Detection of Covid-19 by means of trained dogs”.
He clarified that the filters for the detection of various pathologies are not only useful for Covid-19, but also for the detection of the grapevine virus, that is, the pathology that affects the grape that produces red wine.
The Cinvestav researcher acknowledged that the cost of having a dog training school is high, but that there is interest in training dogs in Yucatán and emphasized that in the medium term, there would be a branch of the school currently located in Hermosillo, Sonora.
He said that viral disease detection can be implemented in airports, hotels, restaurants, and schools.
He recalled that in November 2021, work was announced to characterize and isolate the volatile compounds (which become vapors or gases) present in the sweat of Covid-19 positive people, to develop a formulation that will allow more efficient training of the dogs used to detect the disease.
“The dogs are capable of detecting in a matter of seconds if a person has Covid-19, which makes them an affordable alternative for use in industries, shopping malls, airports or at sporting events attended by many people,” he said.
Vidal Martinez mentioned that with the data obtained, the dogs have a 71% to 85% success rate in identifying Covid-19 positive cases from sweat samples, which is higher than the maximum detection limit of the antigen tests, which is 72%.
In addition, it was found that dogs trained at the Obi-K19 school (in Hermosillo) are able to identify the new coronavirus infection in people up to three days before it is detected through diagnostic methods and the first symptoms appear, so the use of canines to prevent the spread of the disease could be of greater help.
TYT Newsroom
