Researchers in the United Kingdom have received government funding to determine if dogs can detect COVID-19 through scent, which could lead to a new form of tracing the spread of the disease.
Britain’s health department announced Saturday it has granted 500,000 pounds ($853,000 CAD) toward the research, which will be conducted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Durham University and a British charity, Medical Detection Dogs.
Innovation Minister James Bethell said the clinical trial will help determine whether so-called “COVID dogs” can reliably detect the disease, and even stop it from spreading. “Bio-detection dogs already detect specific cancers and we believe this innovation might provide speedy results as part of our