The UAE Ministry of Interior on Wednesday announced the launch of a special mobile unit of police dogs trained to detect Covid-19 cases. The unit will be deployed at major events.
The police dogs will screen for potentially infected people using small scent samples collected through an armpit swab.
The UAE has been using sniffer dogs at multiple entry points to detect cases of Covid-19 among travellers. The Ministry earlier said the K9 dogs have been deployed in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah airports, and at the Ghuwaifat border point.
A study conducted in the UAE last year showed a high accuracy rate of trained dogs in Covid-19 detection. From a sample of 1,000 participants at Covid-19 screening centres, the study showed a 98% correlation between the PCR test results and detections by the dogs.
