Are COVID-sniffing dogs the testing solution we need?

Cleveland dog expert Gary Broberg thinks scent-detection dogs could be the answer to real-time testing of COVID-19. He’s confident that the right dogs could be quickly trained to detect the coronavirus in a sample.

Patients’ mouth swabs would be placed in test tubes and the dog would be told to sniff them, indicating a positive test by sitting down. A second dog would be used to verify the results.

According to Broberg, the dogs selected for the task would already be trained for scent detection and could be “imprinted” on the coronavirus in just a couple of days.

“The government is paying something like $250 to have a person tested with a kit. You could do this for 39 cents and a pound of dog food,” Broberg said.