The Duchess of Cornwall, alongside health secretary Matt Hancock, made an appearance at London’s Paddington Station to meet two exceptional dogs from her charity, Medical Detection Dogs.
Labradors Bob and Basil are trained to sniff out COVID, and the Duchess of Cornwall was able to watch them show off their skills.
Sniff out COVID
The clever canines are trained to pick out positive samples of COVID-19 using their tremendous sense of smell. Under the watchful eye of the Duchess of Cornwall, the pair took part in a series of tests which included five human volunteers. One of the volunteers was wearing clothing that had the odour of COVID-19 on it. The dogs had the job of sniffing it out.
The Duchess was very impressed to see Bob and Basil both pass with flying colours on six different tests. You can check out photos and a video of the dogs undergoing their testing below:
While the dogs are undergoing training at busy locations like Paddington Station, they will also take part in trials at football stadiums, shopping centres and schools to see how they cope with different distractions around them.
Game changer for diagnosing COVID
The trials are part of a collaboration between the Duchess’ charity, Durham University and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
The hope is that those dogs who can pick up a positive COVID-19 result within half a second will be a game-changer for the way the disease is diagnosed and enable quicker screener of people in public places such as train stations and airports.
Watch also: Government delivers funding to research of C19 detector dogs
