The Ministry of Social Development and Human Security and the Faculty of Veterinary Science at Chulalongkorn University will have volunteers use sniffer dogs to detect COVID-19 cases among bed-ridden people in communities.
Prof Dr Kaywalee Chatdarong, deputy dean for research and innovation at the faculty, said the project made use of the sense of smell of dogs that was 50 times better than humans. Sniffer dogs could identify COVID-19 patients from the smell of their sweat, she said.
The faculty had trained six Labrador Retriever dogs for the task and they proved to have the accuracy rate of as high as 94.8% in detecting asymptomatic COVID-19 cases, she said.
They formed the first group of dogs trained for the screening of COVID-19 cases in Thailand, Prof Dr Kaywalee said. (TNA)
