Project Professor Grandjean in France
The project of the K9 Training Centre actually fitted in a whole research project on Covid detection dogs led by French professor Grandjean. His study showed that detection dogs can recognise Covid-19 from the smell of sweat of patients.
The professor collected the results of the different projects with Covid detection dogs all over the world.
Very successful results
The team of the K9 training centre trained the Covid detection dogs on a daily basis with ultimately exceptionally strong results. In total silence the K9 Training Centre worked on a research project with the Belgian football team KV Oostende. Whenever players and staff had to undergo a PCR test every few days, sweat samples were also taken from these people and later checked by the dogs at the Centre.
The K9 Training Centre thus used the Remote Scent Tracing method. A technique the team has already mastered by training explosives dogs in this way.
They even built a whole new training lab for this project at the centre.
It turned out that the detection dogs already indicated the contamination on the first day. An enormous difference compared to the PCR tests. Projects in other countries also turned out to have demonstrated the same remarkable results.
Never operational
In the end, the Belgian government never gave permission to recognise the Covid detection dogs, which is why this separate project was abruptly cancelled.
Medical detection dogs
However, the whole project was not a fiasco at all. On the contrary.
The K9 Training Centre has tried to do its bit in the fight against the virus.
The project was very much appreciated by the media and the general public.
In the end, the training staff of the K9 Training Center learned a lot from this project and the close cooperation with Ghent University.
In the future, the K9 Training Center hopes to work even more with other types of medical detection dogs such as detection dogs for cancer, Parkinson's disease or epilepsy.
https://youtu.be/DrdH2m-CSo4
