Hawaii’s largest private hospital, Maui-based nonprofit team up to train dogs to detect COVID-19

Assistance Dogs of Hawaii introduces the “Super Sniffers.” Three labrador retrievers and one golden retriever, ages 1 1/2 to 5 years, are being trained to detect people infected with COVID-19. (Photo by Assistance Dogs of Hawaii)

HONOLULU (Eagle News) – The nonprofit Assistance Dogs of Hawaii (ADH) and The Queens Health System are taking part in a major research study to teach dogs to detect people with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and help prevent the spread of infection.

The said experiment is also being conducted in partnership with Medical Detection Dogs UK and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Phase 1 of the study is underway and includes collecting sweat samples so that dogs can learn to distinguish the scent of COVID-19. Hundreds of positive and negative samples are needed. Volunteers in Oahu are also being recruited for the study, which poses no risk to human participants or the dogs since the virus is not transmissible through sweat.

Volunteers must be age 18 or over; due to have a coronavirus swab test; and be willing and able to wear a face mask for three hours, as well as a T-shirt and socks for 12 hours.

Three labrador retrievers and one golden retriever from the ADH Campus on Maui are currently participating in the study. Once trained, the dogs can be deployed in ports of entry and public gatherings around the state to provide rapid, non-invasive screening for COVID-19. ADH believes that this work may prove integral in the fight against COVID-19 and be a method of screening large numbers of individuals very quickly.

“This is an opportunity for us to ‘paws’ the spread of COVID-19,” quipped Dr. Whitney Limm, Executive Vice President and Chief Physician Executive of The Queen’s Health System.

“The ultimate goal is the practical application of this research to help screen people, even those who may be asymptomatic, at places like airports, schools, hospitals and other gathering places to prevent the spread of disease,” said ADH Executive Director Maureen Maurer. “Man’s best friend is joining the fight against man’s worst enemy.”

This is not the first time ADH has participated in a study on the extraordinary olfactory capacity of dogs to detect disease. Maurer, who has a Masters of Science in Canine Studies, was the principal investigator in two earlier research studies, which proved dogs could detect life-threatening bacterial infections in humans with an accuracy rate close to 99 percent.

(With reports from EBC Hawaii Bureau, Eagle News Service)