As part of a pilot project, Helsinki Airport, Finland's biggest, has employed four dogs of various breeds that have been trained to detect COVID-19.
The city of Vantaa in Greater Helsinki, which is responsible for health safety at the airport, decided to put the canines to work after promising research into their olfactory abilities. Dogs turned out to be able to detect significantly smaller amounts of the virus than the widely-used PCR tests, and can do so more rapidly than laboratory tests. At best, the dogs can identify the coronavirus in seven minutes.
At this stage, taking part in the dog testing is voluntary for both travellers and airport staff. The process has been described as “easy, painless and completely pleasant”.
The test subjects step into a small, screened-off area where they take skin wipe samples of themselves and drop them into a receptacle. Each sample is subsequently sniffed by the four-legged doctor. This arrangement is designed to prevent people allergic to dogs from coming into direct contact and protect the handlers from possible exposure.
No personal data is collected at the testing point. Anyone who receives a positive result is directed to a Helsinki-Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS) health information point for guidance on further steps.
Internationally, only a small number of dogs have gotten sick with the coronavirus, and most of them only had mild cases of the illness and quickly recovered. The four dogs work in shifts in pairs, allowing each other to rest.
Anna Hielm-Björkman, a senior researcher at the University of Helsinki’s Veterinary Faculty, who has led the corona dog research and training, described the airport as a “challenging place to work”, which not all dogs can cope with.
“About half a dozen dogs dropped out of the study because they weren’t suited to working in this kind of place, with so much noise,” Hielm-Björkman told national broadcaster Yle.
Covid-19 has turned out to be a relatively easy odour for dogs to detect, which made it possible to quickly retrain some of them, such as Kössi the greyhound crossbreed, from sniffing out cancer.
“Dogs have millions of years of development work in their noses, so our lab tests can’t come anywhere near what they can smell,” Hielm-Björkman explained.
The pilot project at the Helsinki airport is expected to last four months and is financed by the state.