Helsinki Airport Will Have Dogs To Identify Covid-19 (Faster Than Laboratory Tests)

Finavia a Finnish airport operator will soon start working with Covid-19 dogs at Helsinki Airport.

This will be a new, efficient and fast way to reduce the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. The dogs’ sensitive noses are expected to speed up the process of identifying those infected with Covid-19.

Ulla Lettijeff, Airport Director from Finavia, said:

“The pilot that will be kicked off on Tuesday is unique and a world first. No other airport has attempted to use canine scent detection on such a large scale against Covid-19. We are pleased with the city of Vantaa’s initiative. This might be an additional step forward on the way to beating covid-19,”

Faster than laboratory tests

According to preliminary tests detecting Covid-19 is apparently easy for dogs, they were able to smell the virus with almost 100% certainty.

Dogs can also identify the virus days before the symptoms have even started. This is something that laboratory tests fail to do.

Dogs are also able to identify covid-19 from a much smaller sample than the PCR tests used by health care professionals. The difference is massive, as a dog only needs 10-100 molecules to identify the virus, whereas test equipment requires 18,000,000.

Taking a Covid-19 dog test at Helsinki Airport will not include direct contact with the dog. Instead, the dog will perform its work in a separate booth. Those taking the test will swipe their skin with a test wipe and drop it into a cup, which is then given to the dog. This also protects the dog’s handler from infections. All the tests are processed anonymously.

If the test result is positive, the passenger will be directed to a health information point maintained by the city of Vantaa, which is located at the airport.

Bottom Line

Everything that will be introduced to make travel safer, concerning Covid-19, is a good thing. If Covid-19 dogs will be a success we will probably see more of these trained dogs at other airports…

The whole story can be found at aviation24.be

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