Western Pa. task force intent on training dogs to sniff out covid-19

More than 100 dogs and handlers from throughout the region were put through their paces this month as they vied for the opportunity to join in the battle against the covid-19 pandemic.

During sessions in Youngwood and Imperial, a panel of trainers evaluated the dogs’ ability to sniff out hidden objects with their powerful noses. Just 10 will be selected as finalists for proposed training to focus their olfactory senses on a more important target — the covid-19 virus.

“We’re looking at how apt they are to be imprinted on a scent. They get a reward when they find the scent,” said Rodney Little, owner of Youngwood Top Dog Services. Little also is the commander of the newly formed Kovid-19 Detection Task Force, a Southwestern Pennsylvania organization intent on training dogs to detect and alert to the presence of covid-19.

With up to 300 million scent receptors, compared to 6 million for humans, dogs have demonstrated their ability to sense such diseases as cancer and diabetes in their human companions.

Researchers in Great Britain, Florida and eastern Pennsylvania are looking to train canines to similarly provide warning of covid-19 infections. Little’s group wants to achieve the same goal in Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Heather Cordial, chief of staff for Westmoreland County Commissioner Doug Chew, witnessed the Youngwood dog evaluations Saturday and noted the potential for properly trained canines to monitor for the presence of covid-19 cases at such public places as the county courthouse and Arnold Palmer Regional Airport.

“Nothing is set in stone,” she added. “It’s something the commissioners would have to vote on once tis is all finalized.”

Elissa Weimer of Imperial, head trainer for the Kovid-19 Detection Task Force and owner of Paws & Order Dog Training, said she’s looking for dogs that are independent thinkers. “I don’t want the handlers telling the dogs when to alert,” she said.

Once the task force has selected a cadre of candidate dogs and handlers, the next steps, pending approval from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will be to obtain saliva or urine samples containing covid-19 and a secure facility where the dogs can be trained to hone in on the virus.

The task force, with assistance from consultant Ted Davi of Greensburg, also hopes to land some grant funding.

Little figures “$150,000 will get us up and running with 10 fully certified handlers and 10 fully certified scent detection dogs.” The task force also is accepting donations.

Davi estimates it could take about six weeks to train candidate dogs to detect elevated temperatures in people, which could indicate a potential covid-19 infection. He suggests it likely would take several months of more intensive training for the dogs to be able to detect the virus by scent, a key goal for revealing the infection in asymptomatic carriers of the disease.

A team headed by Dr. Cynthia Otto at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine is awaiting the arrival of covid-19 samples to begin scent training with a group of dogs there, hoping to demonstrate the canines can differentiate between samples that are positive for covid-19 and those that are negative. Preliminary screening of live humans by the trained dogs could begin as early as July.

Otto said in a press release her study’s goal is to “harness the dog’s extraordinary ability to support the nation’s covid-19 surveillance systems, with the goal of reducing community spread.”

Heather Junqueira’s Florida-based nonprofit, BioScent K9, is hoping to work with bio-tech companies to train beagles and basset hounds to detect covid-19.

“We have a pretty good idea they can do it,” she said. “We would put other viruses into our testing and training process to make sure the dogs are not simply detecting a general virus odor.”

Little believes properly trained dogs, with their sensitive noses, should be able to detect a covid-19 case from as far away as 6 to 10 feet, so they wouldn’t have to risk exposure to covid-19 while performing their important task.

Visit pawandorder.com/covid-k9-task-force for more details about the local task force.