One sniff might speed up reopening. And we may have our canine friends to thank. You have seen these dogs around Honolulu International Airport for years. They sniff out illegal produce and contraband that could hurt Hawaii’s fragile environment. But could there be another hugely beneficial use in our new world?
Dogs have excellent noses, and by the way, so do equines. Dogs have noses that are magnitudes more sensitive than humans’. In addition to sniffing out food, drugs, and weapons, dogs can, and already are being trained to sniff out C0vid. If fact, just this week they have been dispatched at an airport for just that use.
C0vid Sniffing Dogs with results in one minute.
Already, specially trained dogs at Dubai airport are being utilized to sniff out the virus. See the video below. This all started on August 1. But can and will these be deployed in Hawaii, which has already used sniffing police service dogs for the past decade?
Dogs are being trained to detect smells that emanate from those who have the virus, called volatile organic compounds, rather than the virus itself. This isn’t the first time dogs have been trained to detect diseases, which to date have included TB, diabetes, cancers, and malaria.
At Dubai, tests are self-administered with travelers swabbing their underarms. “Samples are taken in collaboration with partners from Dubai Health Authority; results are out in less than one minute.” — Major Salah Al Mazrooei, Dubai Police. There is no interaction between the traveler and the dogs.
Canine training program at the University of Pennsylvania’s veterinary school.
A new pilot program was started recently to enable dogs to detect C0vid. There is much interest in this including from multiple states. We only hope that Hawaii is one of them, since we have heard nothing from Hawaii officials about this.
A representative from PENN said, “With up to 300 million smell receptors – compared to six million in humans – dogs are uniquely positioned to aid in disease detection.” They added that this study “sets the stage for dogs to be a force multiplier in the mission to detect COVID-19, particularly among asymptomatic patients, or hospital or business environments where testing is most challenging.” Preliminary screening of live humans by these trained dogs is set to begin shortly.
The PENN communications director, Martin Hackett, announced they “have been receiving a sizable amount of preliminary interest from organizations, entities, municipalities, states, other countries—all expressing interest in employing COVID canine scent detection.”
We have learned that the Pennsylvania study is working with the possibility of having dogs sniff the passengers directly rather than indirectly as is done in Dubai. How dogs can be protected from infection at this point isn’t clear.
Accuracy remains another issue, although one study in Germany indicated a very high level of accuracy, perhaps as much as 92-95%. The use of other testing in conjunction with dogs, will certainly remain indicated.
In Dubai, negative PCR tests are required for arriving passengers and the dogs serve as an adjunct for any cases that could still slip through following pre-travel testing. Sounds like a near-perfect potential match for Hawaii’s travel dilemma. Your comments indicate lack of testing is one of the reasons you will be postponing Hawaii vacations. With the ability to get standard tests being so inconsistent and often elusive, this seems to have the potential to be a boon for Hawaii tourism.
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Sounds like a good solution. I would not mind this. I have one question. If a person takes a test 72 hours before travel, goes into quarantine waiting for test results to come back the the results are positive, then what. Are they sent back, do they remain in quarantine until a negative test and if so for how long?
This idea doesn’t pass the ‘sniff test’. A vaccine combined with herd immunity, will be the only reliable way to insure Covid negative travel. 90% suspected cases are asymptomatic, and you can carry low levels of the virus for 3-14 days without symptoms, leading to false negatives. I think people are grasping at straws now, as economic desperation grows. Hawaii has chosen a path of isolation, without a plan to rejoin the rest of the world. Covid-19 is not going away for the foreseeable future, and either you accept the risk of public health spread, or just wait for the local population to spread it to each other completely.
So, if passenger 12A test positive, will passenger 12B testing negative be required to quarantine…. so on and so forth! The testing needs to be done BEFORE boarding the aircraft! I think the Mainland needs to get their act together and defeat this virus before travel is allowed to the beautiful Hawaiian islands 🌺
This, in combination with the litmus test (80% accurate) available from E25Bio (Massachusetts) or Mammoth Biosciences (California), would be an excellent 1-2 step process to detect active virus carriers. The dogs wouldn’t need EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) which Lt Gov Green told me by email was the State requirement (read-roadblock) for using the litmus tests right now.
Too bad the State doesn’t have someone in authority who is willing and able to make these kind of decisions and implement them with going thru hoops!
Dogs are GREAT!! Matter of fact, the more I’m around people, the more I like dogs.
Aloha!
Such Good Pups!!! Whatever it takes that leads to the safest possible reopening of Hawaii is welcomed. One of my dearest friends is in a Covid high-risk category and lives on Maui, so keeping her healthy is very important.
Thank you for keeping us informed as we all navigate being able to travel to Hawaii again. I’ve been a subscriber to BoH for 7 wonderfully informed years — Keep up the Great Work guys!!
Mahalo
Hi Lisa.
Thanks so much for being a reader and now a commenter.
Aloha.
Wow, I worked with K9 in the Marine Corps, let’s hope this is something we can do.
Bill
I’m dumbfounded by this idea has anyone looked into how much money one of these dogs cost? It’s about $50,000 to start. Then you have to take into account training a handle, paying a handler, yearly vet bills, housing and feeding.
How many of these $50,000 dogs will be required to man a very busy airport 24 hrs a day? 20 or 30? Currently there’s a world wide shortage of bomb sniffing dogs there’s bidding wars for good ones, so even if you have the money it will take years to train enough dogs to meet demand.
Thanks for posting the article guys, but this ain’t going to happen.
Hi Richard.
Thanks for your comment. These dogs are already working at Honolulu Airport.
Aloha.
Hi guys I know there’s dogs at Honolulu airport are they bomb and drug sniffing dogs or do they already have a covid sniffing dog.
If that’s the case there’s covid sniffing dog already working at Honolulu airport then I stand corrected, but I can’t find anywhere online stating that fact.
I also read that it takes 3 to 6 months to train a dog and every airport on the planet wants them. I understand there’s pilot programs, but it will take a very long time and a lot of money to meet airport’s needs for these dogs.
If someone with no symptoms tests positive on arrival, are they put on the next return flight? And if that’s full then what? And would the airlines agree to take a person who has tested positive? Just wondering.
Excellent question! There is a lot of information on how to determine possible infection threats but not much information on what happens if it’s found !
I highly doubt our reactive politicians (vs. proactive) will implement such a plan. Maybe we should train our own dogs to sniff out “do-nothing” politicians & rid Hawaii of them?
Made me giggle, Margie…😂
Would that work as well in Foggy Bottom?
Last I heard, Hawaiians don’t want the tourists there, so why now are they changing their tune?? Do that many people really want to go to Hawaii?? Personally, I’d rather visit Mexico… the people are much more appreciative than the people of Hawaii…. just something I’ve noticed while visiting both places.
Really? I feel completely the opposite. Maybe it depends on where you’ve been. I’ve mostly been to the northern Pacific coast of Baja as well as Cabo. No problems there, but nothing extraordinary. On Oahu, Maui, & the Big Island I’ve felt nothing but love and aloha.
At this point I think I would trust the dogs more than I would trust the Covid test.
At this point I would trust dogs more than anything offered by the federal government.
Its not the federal government offering this why throw more politics in???
The reason is because the federal government has allowed 5 million infections, 170,000 deaths and climbing. Their only response is to let the states carry their water and throw money and worthless executive orders at the problem with no real plan. It needs to be said and as a reminder to those virus deniers that frequent this site.
Save your money and avoid all these hassles until the put tourism at the top of thier priority list.
Give a dog a bone (or not) and skip the trip to hawaii!
Interesting and promising! I wonder if how the dogs respond, if at all, to those who no longer have the virus but have the antibodies.
It’s good to see that a suggestion I made recently about using dogs to detect COVID is actually getting a sniff. It would be an innovative way to get things rolling. Hopefully the State of Hawaii is considering this avenue.
I also mentioned, which you guys already knew, the inexpensive, rapid paper test only needing a saliva sample that could easily be given on arrival at a Hawaii airport. This, too, seems to be on the radar as a Civil Beat article details.
A combination of these and other protocols could be used right now to greatly reduce the likelihood an arriving passenger is a risk to transmit COVID. And perhaps obviating the need for a negative NAAT test, often hard to get these days.
A question, please. Any idea when the governor will definitively rule on the Sept 1 trans-Pacific opening date? And if you were the betting type, what odds would you give that the date is changed yet again?
Aloha Mike,
Technically, there is no “opening date”. Hawaii has been opened to travel since June, from the mainland. Flights have been flying from a half dozen (give or take) locations on the west coast. The question is whether you want (more like, are willing) to do a 14 day quarantine. If you are, that is the only restriction.
To answer you, the odds are slim that the 14 day quarantine will be lifted, since they recently (2 days ago) implemented another 14 day quarantine for travel between islands, which also, coincidentally, was lifted in June…along with the original vacation travel ban to Hawaii. The betting man I am, says there is a 90% chance they will continue with the quarantine, and that should be announced in the next week, or so.
Mahalo BoH, for the daily updates, although I hope by the middle of October they lift the inter-island quarantine…ugh! 😎
Hi Jim.
Thanks.
Aloha.
I like all of the suggestions!
If we could only get the Governor to read the Beat of Hawaii.
Good try I think but I’ve had to cancel and rebook, then cancel again before it finally sunk in- this isn’t the time for vacation- anywhere, nothing is normal!
We have resigned ourselves to waiting until the vaccine is here and herd immunity is achieved. Even if we were lucky enough to get into Hawaii, could the Islands medically take care of a large group if they need hospitalization/vents? I don’t think so, so we shall wait and dream of better times.
Getting into Hawaii is just a first step, what about everything else?
Gentlemen, I love the idea of dogs as gatekeepers against contraband and infection but is anyone who saves up for a $ 3000-4000.00 per week vacation going to want to a dog as an arbitrator????
Warm regards,
Hugh
Hi Hugh.
Thanks.
Aloha.
Grasping at straws. It is a new pilot program…how many dogs would be needed per island or are all flights going to come through Honolulu, and again….how many dogs are we talking and how long does it take to train them? The people of the state of Hawaii do not have time to wait around while dozens of dogs are trained. They have waited too long to just now begin thinking about something like this. Your Gov. started hammering the final nail in the coffin for most businesses as of yesterday. One more blow will be the death blow. Not to mention, with a 92% accuracy rate (which would normally sound pretty good) that would mean that on a plane of 500 people, at least 40 of those “tested” could be wrong, which will still require some kind of normal scientific testing procedure to be in place, and we all know where that stands at the moment. Would these dogs need to go through the mandatory quarantine period that most domestic animals coming in to the island must go through prior to or after arrival? Way too many holes in this solution for anyone to risk thousands of dollars on travel expenses.
Aloha Sheryl,
There have been trained Dogs at the Honolulu Airport for years, and they would/could be trained to do this in a relevantly short period of time compared to training dogs from the ground up. I think I have seen dogs in HNL in my last 15 or so trips 2 times. that’s over a 5 (or so) year span. It is feasible to do, but something like this should have been implemented at least a few months back, and they would need more than just a few dogs, that’s for sure! Better late than never though, eh?
FYI, an even bigger issue than all the rest you have previously mentioned is the following:
Hawaii’s current 72-hour COVID-19 pre-testing certification plan stipulates a NAAT test, rather than a PCR test.
That requirement alone may eliminate more potential travelers than any other requirement.
In many (probably most) areas of the Mainland, PCR tests are the only reasonably-available tests, and it is next to impossible to find and obtain a NAAT test.
here’s hoping they do this.. sounds like a great idea.
If only there would be enough trained dogs to supply the whole country. It seems like it might be a great idea as long as the dogs are protected somehow, seeing as how there have been dogs (and cats) have contracted SARS-CoV2 from contact with someone infected with Covid-19.
Our mayor has been diligent with trying to keep Kauai safe from the virus. I think he has done a great job so far. I understand people wanting to come to the islands for vacation. It’s a beautiful place. But with the increase of cases across the country I would hope everyone would do their best to stay home as much as possible, wear a mask when outside of their homes, and social distance. If everyone would take a month or 2 maybe we could actually get the virus under control.
Stay safe and have a blessed day! Aloha
Dangit. I was hoping Hawaii was considering allowing Americans to bring their dogs to the islands, with proper health & birth control records, of course. I get why they don’t, I’m just a frustrated HI lover who also loves her dogos and would readily travel back and forth if it was easier.
Aloha Barbara,
As a resident of Kaua`i, I do bring my dog to the Mainland. There is a procedure (Department of Agriculture). If you follow their guidelines, it is a smooth process. The inspection coming into Oahu is right at the airport. Neighbor island have different requirements. I find it is easier to go to Oahu then take the next flight to Kaua`i. Best wishes!! MelissaE.
Hi Melissa.
Thanks for your comment. We like to hear from you.
Aloha.