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Sniffer dogs have played a dynamic role in the line of defense at an airport. To help fight against COVID-19, Dubai has now recruited these sniffer dogs. To test samples from travellers visiting the country, the coronavirus-sniffing dogs are hard at work at the International Airport.

Tourism being opened since July in Dubai, visitors have a mandatory requirement to provide evidence of being COVID negative. This test should be taken within 96 hours of travel. However, passengers arriving from high-risk countries and those with symptoms are often subject to secondary screening at the airport. Sweat samples are also taken once the passenger arrives at the airport. These samples are then smelled by these specially trained dogs.

The sniffer dogs are trained in collaboration with the Dubai’ Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and have been 80 percent successful so far. The dogs underwent four days of training involving placing wool soaked in sweat samples inside metal cones. This is to ensure that the dogs do not have any contact with the infected material.

The Dubai International Airport has become the first country to engage sniffer dogs in the COVID-19 test and the results are received in less than a minute. Compared to the six million smell receptors found in humans, dogs have over 300 million smell receptors, which makes them distinct. There have been many studies showing that if dogs are trained, they would be able to detect the infection even from asymptomatic. With an accuracy rate of 91%, the sniffer dogs have helped conduct over 400 tests in recent weeks.

In recent months, there have been several experiments carried out across Europe to confirm if sniffer dogs can detect COVID-19. In partnership with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the charity Medical Detection Dogs is working to identify if their dogs can be trained to provide these dogs are already well trained in diagnosing malaria, cancer, Parkinson's, and bacterial infections through the senses. Whereas, in Germany these detection of sniffer dogs was successful, and the accurate detection rate was 94%, with 792 correct reflections of non-infected samples, 157 correct positive identification, and 33 incorrect results.

Precautions have been taken over fears that dogs too can spread the infection. With the recent statistics, the UAE has reported 61163 Coronavirus positive cases and 351 deaths to date.

UAE has always been home to millions of expats even before the COVID-19 pandemic was hit. As per a recent report, there would be an estimated 1.2 million expat workers leaving the UAE in 2020. As of June, there were more than around 450,000 expats registered under the repatriation flights to leave UAE amidst the fear of pandemic. Apart from these, the reports also say that 900,000 jobs are to be shed in the UAE by losing 10% of its expats. UAE has taken its measures in protecting against the incursion of new COVID-19 cases since some expats along with international passengers are returning.