Dognostics

New research suggests that dogs are able to detect the presence of CoVid-19. At the moment the results are encouraging ... and at a hospital in Florida, Buffy (a two-year-old yellow Labrador) is trained to sniff out CoVid-19; she sniffs visitors to the hospital and if they are Covid-19 positive, she sits down. They are claiming a 95% accuracy rate for her. As well as the lab test, or dognostic test as some are calling it, visitors also have their temperatures checked but if Buffy gets a positive result, the person has to have a CoVid-19 test. In research elsewhere, nine previously untrained dogs have been first taught in general scent detection and then moved on to learning to distinguish between urine samples from Covid-positive and Covid-negative patients. The samples had first been "inactivated" so it was safe for the dogs (who can apparently catch Covid-19) to smell. Success rate:  96%.  The information I read suggested that the use of dognostics may not be implemented quickly for day-to-day screening ... this was supposed to be something to do with the costs involved in large-scale training/testing, but I'm wondering if it has more to do with the dogs being trained to detect the virus in urine ... it's going to take longer to screen people if they need to give that sample first!