Skip to main content

Sit back, remain, COVID detection! Dogs from Chile report for duty at Santiago Airport

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - At Chile's Santiago International Airport, the task of sniffing out passengers contaminated with COVID-19 falls to the dogs.

When they smell the infection, a team of Golden Retrievers and Labradors sit down to get a treat. The canines wear green jackets "biodetector" with a red cross.

Passengers clean their necks and wrists at an airport health checkpoint with gauze pads that are then placed in glass containers and sent to the dogs to see if they detect COVID-19.

Sniffer dogs are best known for detecting drugs and bombs, but they have also been trained to detect malaria, cancer and Parkinson's disease beforehand.

In the United Arab Emirates and Finland, dogs qualified to detect the novel coronavirus have already begun sniffing passenger samples at airports.

A research recently discovered dogs with 85 percent to 100 percent accuracy can identify infected individuals and rule out infection with 92 percent to 99 percent accuracy.

The dogs were trained by Chile's Carabinero police and Inspector General Esteban Diaz said dogs had more than 3 million olfactory receptors, more than 50 times that of humans, so they were ideally placed to help combat the coronavirus.

Infections in Chile are well down from a high in June, but according to a Reuters count, they have started increasing again with around 2,000 new cases registered on average every day. Chile has 589,189 confirmed cases in total and 16,217 deaths due to the disease. (Graphic: 34pvUyi/ tmsnrt.rs)

Comments

New comments are not allowed.

Popular posts from this blog

UK fishing industry disappointed by Brexit deal "fudge"

https://foundflight.com/cities/london/ LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's fishing industry is disappointed that a Brexit trade deal struck with the European Union does not represent more of a reduction in the access that the bloc currently has to British waters, an industry representative said. "The industry will be bitterly disappointed that there is not more of definitive break," Barrie Deas, chief executive of The National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations, told Reuters. "It's a bit of a fudge." British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said earlier on Thursday that Britain had agreed a "reasonable" five-and-half-year transition period with the EU over fisheries, longer than the three years it wanted but shorter than the 14 years the EU had originally asked for. Deas said the biggest concern for the industry was likely to be a decision to allow EU fishing boats to continue to operate up to six miles from the coasts of the United K...
Post a Comment
Read more

Canadian police officer was 'awkward' helping FBI to extradite Huawei CFO

VANCOUVER (Reuters) - On the day Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou was detained two years ago, a police officer stationed at Vancouver airport testified on Monday that he found himself in a very uncomfortable position" as the U.S. point of contact. Federal Investigation Bureau (FBI). As part of her U.S. extradition case, Meng, 48, returned to the British Columbia Supreme Court on Monday for the final week of witness cross examinations, in the wake of reports last week that her lawyers and the U.S. prosecutors held talks to negotiate an arrangement that could see her release and return to China. I'm not there at the end of the day to provide information and act on behalf of the FBI. I'm employed as an RCMP officer there,' testified Sergeant Ross Lundie of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). "Given my background, assisting the FBI - this is a very uncomfortable position to be in," he said. On a warrant from the United States, Meng was arrest...
Post a Comment
Read more

Britain's navy in the event of a no-deal Brexit to defend fishing waters

LONDON (Reuters) - In the event that the Brexit transition phase ends on Dec. 31 without an agreement on future relations with the European Union, four Royal Navy patrol ships are on standby to defend Britain's fishing waters, the Ministry of Defence (MOD) said. The step attracted criticism from lawmakers within the Conservative Party of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but was brushed off by the French government. "Keep calm and carry on," said an Elysée official, using a British wartime slogan. Where no trade agreement is reached, questions are raised about potential skirmishes between British and international fishing vessels, with current transitional rules allowing EU boats access to British waters set to expire by the end of the year. "An MOD spokesman said The MOD has carried out comprehensive training and preparation to ensure that Defence is ready at the end of the Transition Phase for a variety of scenarios. The 80-meter-long navy vessels would h...
Post a Comment
Read more