Four-legged fighters against the spread of Covid-19

Two trained dogs appeared in the ranks of the Austrian army – a Rottweiler and a Belgian Shepherd Dog, capable of accurately identifying the carrier of the coronavirus.

As reported yesterday by the Kleine Zeitung newspaper, service dogs are specially trained to detect Covid-19. The publication quotes Otto Kopich, a spokesman for the Army Kennel Center:

“We have achieved something special here. Currently, besides the first Fantasy dog ​​trained to detect coronavirus, there is another dog, the Rottweiler, who has been trained to do the same. “

Such training lasts about six months, after which the dogs can be used to identify carriers of the virus. However, the services of quadrupeds are now being used in a test mode, and they will not have to “serve” in the army – training is conducted for scientific purposes.

Similar research trials are underway around the world, from the UK to Thailand. Dogs’ strong sense of smell allows them to detect coronavirus with a high degree of accuracy, so that they can be successfully used for monitoring at entrances to the country and at various public events, according to Reuters. Actually, this is what is happening – at the airports of Chile and Finland, trained dogs are already used to control arriving passengers on Covid-19.

Claudia Tanner, Austrian Defense Minister, said more than three thousand samples were used in the training of dogs, including used masks. Four-legged coronavirus fighters have succeeded by “over 80%,” Ms Tanner said at a press conference:

“We’ve known for a long time that our dogs can detect a variety of materials by their sense of smell. But what we have achieved here is something special. “

Colonel Otto Kopich, head of the army’s dog training center, says it takes a dog about 2 weeks to determine which samples are carrying Covid-19, and then another three months for full training.

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