New Delhi: Well various tests are usually carried out on suspected COVID-19 patients to ascertain whether they have been infected by the virus. Some of the tests are expensive, some not that much. However, what the Indian Army has done, can easily be termed as the height of innovation. The Indian Army has trained canines to detect COVID-19 virus for a quick and a real time situation. This has been done to facilitate the easier movements of troops. These canines – ‘Chippiparai’ and ‘Cocker Spaniel’ – have been deployed at transit camps of the force in Delhi and Chandigarh.
The Cocker Spaniel is two-years-old and is named ‘Casper’, and the Chippiparai is one-year-old ‘Jaya’. Till date, 22 samples have been found positive by the COVID-19 detection dogs. This has happened after screening around 3,806 troops at both the places.
Lieutenant Colonel Surinder Saini, Instructor at Remount Veterinary Corps based in Meerut explained how they came upon this innovative idea. He said the Indian Army undertook trials for detection of COVID-19 using the dogs in controlled conditions. This happened after seeing the global trend of using medical detection dogs for various diseases like cancer, malaria, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and others.
There after a concerted effort was made to train an indigenous breed of dog ‘Chippiparai’ and a ‘Cocker Spaniel’. They were trained to detect the volatilome of COVID-19 disease from urine and sweat samples of positive cases.
“Positive and suspected samples were obtained from the Military Hospital, Meerut Cantonment and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Subharti Medical College, Meerut for the purpose of training,” Saini said. These two dogs were successfully trained on specific biomarkers emanating from urine and sweat samples of positive patients.
Scientifically, it is evident that affected body tissues release unique volatile metabolic biomarkers. These are used as disease signatures for detection of disease by the medical detection dogs.
The sensitivity and specificity of both the dogs obtained from screening of 279 urine and 267 sweat samples during the initial trial procedure was found to be very high.
After the training, the dogs were first deployed at a Transit Camp in Delhi for screening of transients. A total of 806 persons were screened during their deployment here.
Further, both dogs were deployed in the transit camp in Chandigarh. They were used for screening of transients moving to operational areas through the transit camp. “More than 3,000 samples have been screened so far by these dogs over there,” Saini said.
Keeping in mind the success of trial, eight more dogs have been incorporated in training for COVID-19 detection.
In India, it is the first time the olfactory capability of canines has been exploited to detect tissues infected with pathogens.
“The effort will turn out to be the part of detectable disease signatures. It will pave the way forward for real time detection of various medical diseases by use of trained medical detection dogs,” the officer informed. He also said that currently various countries like Britain, Finland, Russia, France, the UAE, Germany, Lebanon have started training dogs for COVID-19 detection by screening passengers at the airports and railway stations.