♪ ♪
Did you know there's a
study to see if dogs
can detect the coronavirus?
What do you think
about that, Lando?
♪ ♪
My name is Professor James
Logan and I'm the head of
the Department
of Disease Control at
London School of Hygiene and
Tropical Medicine.
Could you tell me a little
bit about what you do?
Yeah.
So, one of the things
I'm really interested in
is trying to find new
ways to be able to detect
people who have an
infection, and one of the
ways we can do that is
by looking at
their body odour.
Because when you have a disease,
your body odour changes.
Dogs are very good example
of being able to detect
smells and also
learn those smells.
And that's what we're
aiming to do with Covid-19.
So if someone were to get
tested for Covid-19 today,
what would that test
look and feel like?
The conventional ways of
doing it is through a
simple swab
that goes down the nose,
and it's very uncomfortable,
and it's quite,
sort of, invasive.
But by using a dog, we
would be able to do
this at a distance.
So the dog wouldn't even
have to come into
contact with a person.
My school in Nova Scotia
shut down in March.
So could these dogs come
to my school in September
and sniff all the kids to
see if they have Covid-19
before they go inside?
In practice it would be
difficult to get our dogs
over there to do that job.
But there is a possibility
that we could use dogs
like this in that
type of scenario.
We're looking at mainly
airports as one of the
main places where we would
have dogs, and potentially
other travel hubs like a
train station, busy train
stations for example,
perhaps even being
deployed at stadiums
or large venues.
Okay, Lando. Your turn.
Can I sign you to detect
Covid-19?
So is it
difficult to train the dogs?
There's a lot of skill
involved and certainly the
right type of dog
has to be used.
We're using a mixture of
Cocker Spaniels, Labradors
and crosses between the
two, and they usually have
the right sort of
temperament to be trained.
So we're collecting the
odour from-- from people's
feet and also
from their breath.
And also we're collecting shirts
that they've worn as well,
and these will be introduced
to the dogs to train
them to detect that smell.
These dogs are very good
at learning, so if we give
them a treat every time they
get it right, they begin to
associate a reward with
learning this now.
James Logan said that his team
is working with governments
around the world to see
if dogs can be trained in
other countries.
That sounds promising
doesn't it, Lando?
We talked to the
Canadian government.
Turns out that's
not happening here.
But stay tuned.
Maybe some day?
For CBC Kids News,
I'm Isabelle MacNeil.
