Cambodian success in training dogs to ‘sniff out COVID’
Cambodian success in training dogs to ‘sniff out COVID’
Cambodian dogs have completed their first steps in training after one was able to successfully ‘sniff out’ COVID-19.
The news was confirmed today by Heng Ratana, the Royal Government delegate in charge of the Director General of the Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC)
Heng Ratana stated that after the success of this first step, the Cambodian COVID-19 sniffer dogs will start training with COVID-19 carriers.
He said that the dogs had been working with odour samples of 48 COVID 19 patients from the technical team of the University of Health Sciences and that all samples underwent PCR and Cell Culture to ensure safety.
He added that one of the dogs has detected samples of patients successfully during this initial research training.
Another seven dogs are making ‘significant progress’.
He also said that dogs can sniff and detect odours in about 10-15 seconds and surmised that:
“The use of COVID-19 dogs is effective for large crowds such as airports.”
The Director General said that the research and development of technology for dogs is the initiative of Samdech Techo Hun Sen to explore all possibilities to fight the COVID 19 virus.
He added that the dogs were trained in Cambodia and trained by Cambodian dog trainers. Khmer Times
