Abstract
The aim of the present study is to apply the canine olfactory sensitivity to detect COVID-19-positive axillary sweat samples as a One Health approach in Latin America. One hundred volunteers with COVID-like symptoms were invited to participate, and both axillary sweat samples for dog detection and nasopharynx/oropharynx swabs for qPCR were collected. Two dogs, previously trained, detected 97.4% of the samples positive for COVID-19, including a false-negative qPCR-test, and the positive predictive value was 100% and the negative predictive value was 98.2%. Therefore, we can conclude that canine olfactory sensitivity can detect a person infected with COVID-19 through axillary sweat successfully and could be used as an alternative to screen them without invasive testing.
Highlights
Recent events during the SARS-CoV2 Pandemic development, initiated in the Wuhan Province in China in November 2019 [1], have brought enormous challenges to a population adapted to the globalized aspects of daily life, contributing largely to the continuity of the disease development, and augmenting the Public Health impact [2, 3]
In the perspective of One Health, considering the acquired knowledge among human, animal, and environmental scientists brought together, using dogs to detect the odor of COVID-19-positive patients has been shown to work favorably in at least four countries, such as France, Lebanon, Colombia, and Germany [14,15,16]
One Health means that a balance is required to maintain life on Earth
Summary
Recent events during the SARS-CoV2 Pandemic development, initiated in the Wuhan Province in China in November 2019 [1], have brought enormous challenges to a population adapted to the globalized aspects of daily life, contributing largely to the continuity of the disease development, and augmenting the Public Health impact [2, 3]. The reduction of testing minimizes environmental impacts due to the large use of disposable materials, mainly plastic These tests bring a large margin of error due to the false-negative results given the failure to detect viral load or antibody production and thereby, adding the burden of asymptomatic patients being left untested [5], propagating the infection freely and risking further human, animal, and environmental dissemination. Another major obstacle is the cost of testing a large number of people [6] especially for those in developing countries. All remains the logistics of reopening and returning from quarantines that will resume physical contact, and the invasiveness of current tests that depend on tracheal or blood collections
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