Dubai Airport deploys sniffer dogs to detect coronavirus carriers

(Image credit: Freek van den Bergh/AFP via Getty Images)

Specially trained dogs are attempting to sniff out coronavirus infections among travellers arriving at Dubai Airport, in a world first.

K9 sniffer dogs have been stationed at Dubai International Airport and other airports across the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where they are “working to track possible infections using swabs gathered from arriving passengers”, Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National reports.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

YouTube

Watch On

“Travellers who have a fear of dogs do not need to worry as there is no direct contact between dogs and passengers,” adds The National. “Instead, the animals are exposed to samples collected from travellers in an isolated room.”

Debate over whether dogs can sniff out the virus has been raging for months. But “the UAE has chosen to believe that sniffer dogs are efficient in detecting Covid-19 in the passengers”, says The Times of India.

In a statement, Dubai’s Ministry of Interior said: “Data and studies showed that detection of presumed Covid-19 cases achieved approximately 92% in overall accuracy.

“Figures indicate that dogs can quickly detect infected cases, help protect key sites, effectively deal with huge crowds and secure large events, airports, etc.”

Although it may sound barking mad, “this method has been used to detect several other diseases that can affect body odor such as cancer and malaria”, The Sun reports.

A recent study revealed that researchers in Germany have trained army sniffer dogs to distinguish between samples of fluids from patients infected with Covid and healthy donors.

“The animals were able to positively detect SARS-CoV-2 infected secretions with an 83% success rate, and control secretions at a rate of 96%,” according to Deutsche Welle.

Joe Evans is the world news editor at TheWeek.co.uk. He joined the team in 2019 and held roles including deputy news editor and acting news editor before moving into his current position in early 2021. He is a regular panellist on The Week Unwrapped podcast, discussing politics and foreign affairs.

Before joining The Week, he worked as a freelance journalist covering the UK and Ireland for German newspapers and magazines. A series of features on Brexit and the Irish border got him nominated for the Hostwriter Prize in 2019. Prior to settling down in London, he lived and worked in Cambodia, where he ran communications for a non-governmental organisation and worked as a journalist covering Southeast Asia. He has a masterâ€™s degree in journalism from City, University of London, and before that studied English Literature at the University of Manchester.