According to a recent Bloomberg story, a German study has confirmed that dogs can accurately sniff out someone infected with COVID-19 with a 94 percent success rate.
And according to The French Connexion, dogs in a French study did even better, posting a 95 success rate.
This gives hope that dogs can be successfully deployed to detect infections at airports, border crossings, sporting events and other critical sites.
Speaking of smells, more good news for humans. A USA Today report – based on a multi-institution neurobiology study published in Science Advances – says that the loss of smell in COVID-infected humans appears to be temporary. The study indicates that the actual cells in the nose that detect smell are not harmed. This study is consistent with anecdotal evidence that patients are recovering their sense of smell, though it sometimes takes weeks or even months.
One more bit of good news came out in the last few weeks – The Science Times reported that research scientists are bioprinting miniature human organs that they can use to test drugs to treat COVID-19 and other diseases such as cancer. The report adds that researchers “are using 3D printers to create pinhead-sized replicas of human organs to test drugs for COVID-19.”
The researchers have apparently been printing tiny clusters of human organs in the past few years to test drugs for other purposes, focusing a lot of their attention on lungs and colons, two organs hardest hit by the virus. So the time to ramp up for COVID-testing has been fortunately abbreviated.
Hats off to everyone around the globe who is working hard to make the world a safer place!
John O. Cunningham 
Leave a comment