DOG SNIFFING FOR COVID: Intriguing—8 dogs 🐕 were tested w/ 1000 human saliva samples, some from Covid patients. Dogs sniffed out 94% overall after 5 days training, but miss ID’ed some. Avg sensitivity 83% (range 70-95%). Amazing considering no 7 day wait! cnbc.com/2020/07/24/tra…
2) Specificity was 96%—meaning 4% false positive among true healthy samples. The dogs achieved an overall average detection rate of 94% (±3.4%) with 157 correct indications of positive, 792 correct rejections of negative, 33 false positive, and 30 false negs.
3) Dog handlers did not know which samples were #COVID19 infected. Dog breeds include Dutch Shepherd, Lab Retriever, Malinois, and Cocker Spaniel. Some were trained previously for bomb sniffing, one a hunting dog. 
4) And don’t worry, the dogs only sniffed after samples were neutralized to prevent dogs getting infected. All dogs had a high diagnostic specificity with a small range in variation, which could be important for population screening to avoid false positive results.
5) “However, there was quite a range in variation of sensitivity (1-false neg) for the individual dog and inbetween dogs. This can in part be explained with the dogs’ variable training background and short 7 day training regimen”.
6) Also note that total true COVID samples was 18.8%— thus the 94% is a bit higher since normally we don’t expect in out of 5 samples to be positive. If used in airport. There would be a much lower prevalence, hence much lower overall accuracy & lower PPV (pos predictive value)
7) Link to the full dog sniffing study discussed above is linked here. bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…
8) Adorable video folks!!!
