The Indian Army has trained two dogs to find people with coronavirus and plans to train more dogs to do so. reports zakon.kz with reference to RIA Novosti.

The test concluded that COVID-19’s volatile metabolic biomarkers are within the threshold limit of a trained dog’s olfactory detection ability and could aid in the rapid detection of disease in real time, the Indian Army said.

The Army has conducted COVID-19 detection trials using dogs under controlled conditions. The experiment involved dogs of the Cocker Spaniel breed and the Indian Greyhound Chippiparai. The dogs were trained to work with biomarkers from urine and sweat samples from patients who tested positive for COVID-19.

The sensitivity and specificity of both dogs, as measured by 279 urine samples and 267 sweat samples during the initial test procedure, were very high, the statement said.

After training, the dogs were sent to a transit camp in Delhi to check transit passengers. As a result of checking at least 3 thousand samples, the dogs found 18 sick people.

Given the success of the trial, more dogs have been enrolled in training to detect COVID-19, the statement said.

India is in second place in the world in terms of the number of detected infected with coronavirus. According to the latest data from the country’s Ministry of Health, a total of 10.8 million cases of COVID-19 have been registered in the country. At the same time, more than 10.5 million people defeated the disease, about 142 thousand continue treatment, 155 thousand people died from coronavirus and related diseases.