The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

MAN’s best friend can possibly be a four-legged COVID-19 test sniffing for the virus. This ability has already been unleashed at the Miami International Airport and a Miami Heat game—now a local canine detection company hopes to bring the practice to The Bahamas.

Adrian Forbes, from Dog World K9 Service, said the organisation is a fully certified detection canine company that provides service in narcotics, explosive, firearm detection and now bio detection.

“The benefit of having a COVID-19 dog helps prove a counterfeit test. I know just recently we had over 1,000 counterfeit tests found right here in The Bahamas as well as it helps with the false vaccination documents. It also speeds up the process in testing….the process takes less than five seconds versus a rapid antigen test takes maybe 20 minutes, 15 at least. So you speed up time,” he explained during a demonstration exercise at Edmund Moxey Park.

“Companies or agencies that have a large workforce that don’t have time, this can speed up the process. It also helps with large events whether it is a concert. Weeding out people at concerts, the airport, cruise port. It can be applied to schools. Many numerous applications.”

Oscar, a three-year-old Belgian Malinois, has been trained in COVID-19 detection for four weeks but the programme has been in existence for the last year.

“We have two canines now presently on the island that are fully trained and ready to hit the ground running,” Mr Forbes said.

According to the University of Pennsylvania’s PennToday, research published in the PLOS ONE journal “suggests that specially trained detection dogs can sniff out COVID-19-positive samples with 96 percent accuracy”.

Oscar is 99.7 percent accurate in finding the virus, said Mr Forbes.

A New York Times article noted that dogs have 300 million olfactory receptors. Oscar put his own to the test in a demonstration yesterday. An obstacle course set up at the park had several containers but only one had a mask with the COVID-19 virus on it—the dog was able to find it in about four seconds.

Despite these studies and empirical evidence, Mr Forbes has not heard back from officials, including those at the Ministry of Health about using his dogs in the fight against COVID-19, but he is still hopeful.