Indian Army has trained dogs to sniff out Covid-19
The Indian Army claims that it takes just 2 seconds for a canine to detect a case with 95 per cent accuracy.
FollowIn a first, the Indian Army has trained two dogs for detecting Covid-19 cases while 8 others are undergoing training at the RVC Centre in Meerut.
These dogs detect cases on the basis of urine and sweat samples of the troops. Currently, they have been deployed at the Chandigarh transit camp.
The Indian Army claims that it takes just 2 seconds for a canine to detect a case with 95 per cent accuracy.
"Medical detection dogs are pretty well established in western countries. This is for the first time in India that we are using canine to detect human disease. When the virus enters the body, it causes damage to tissues which emanate volatile metabolic biomarkers which are found in urine and sweat samples," Army Veterinary Officer Lt Col Surinder Saini said.
The Army has trained a domestic breed 'Chippiparai' that is found in Tamil Nadu.
"We have trained two 2 breeds. One is Indian, which is Chippiparai. And the second one is the Cocker Spaniel. We are also training a Labrador for this purpose. We have deployed two dogs and eight are under training at RVC centre in Meerut," he said.
On the training of dogs, the veterinary officer said that "Usually it takes 36 weeks to train them but we have done in 14-16 weeks only."
On being asked about the sample size, he said so far over 3800 samples have been tested out of which 22 were found to be positive.
"We have tested 800 plus samples in Delhi and over 3000 in Chandigarh. We are satisfied with the results. We have achieved over 95 per cent results. They are deployed at Chandigarh area, from where troops are moving to forward locations," Lt Col Saini added.
Since Covid-19 pandemic has assumed alarmingly high proportions of morbidity and mortality amongst the human populace world over, countries like Britain, Finland, Russia, France, UAE, Germany, Lebanon have started training dogs for coronavirus detection by screening passengers at airports and railway stations.
During their training, the Army collected positive and suspected samples from Meerut-based Military Hospital and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Subharti Medical College.
The use of such canines in the detection of COVID-19 can assist in quick and real-time detection of the disease, an official said.
The effort will turn out to be the part of detectable disease signatures, thereby paving the way forward for real-time detection of various medical diseases by use of trained medical detection dogs, he said.
