Dogs Are COVID Warriors Too! Meet Casper And Jaya, First Dogs To Sniff-Detect COVID-19

Meet Casper and Jaya: India first dog COVID warriors now ready to treat and overcome the coronavirus pandemic. It has become one of the major countries to develop a vaccine and contain the spread of the virus. Of course, the fight with the virus is still on and scientists, front-line workers, social workers and leaders are continuously engaged in it. But do you know who is also contributing to controlling the virus? Dogs!

Meet Casper and Jaya, specialist military dogs who are being trained to scan the samples and detect COVID-19. This is for the time that the Indian Army is using military dogs to detect COVID-19 virus. While Casper is a two-year-old male Cocker Spaniel, Jaya is a female Chippiparai from Tamil Nadu. Soon the squad will be joined by Mani, indigenous Chippiparai who is also from Tamil Nadu.

As per reports, currently, only Casper and Jaya have completed their training and are assisting the COVID-19 frontline team. While Mani along with eight more dogs is still under training. The dogs can detect the virus by sniffing the urine and sweat samples of the individual.

#WATCH | Delhi: Indian Army dogs have been trained for real-time detection of COVID19. Cocker Spaniel named Casper seen participating in a live demonstration. Jaya and Mani, two dogs of indigenous breed Chippiparai, were also present. pic.twitter.com/18YdHX9Xfw

— ANI (@ANI) February 9, 2021

Casper and Jaya are deployed in Chandigarh and Delhi since November 2020 screening the samples of soldiers posted in Northern Command area. In Delhi, the dogs were able to screen 806 samples out of which 18 were COVID-19 positive.
Army dog trainer Colonel Surender Saini told ANI, “Based on the data from the samples which we have tested till now, we can infer the ability to detect the disease is more than 95% among sniffer dogs.” Moreover, reports suggest that the dogs are trained enough to scan 100 samples per hour with five minutes break every 15 minutes.

Meet Casper and Jaya: India first dog COVID warriors now ready to treat and overcome the coronavirus pandemic.

Apart from India, many other countries have already been using dogs to sniff virus in people. In countries like France, Germany, the UAE, UK, Russia, Finland, Lebanon, Australia, Argentina, Belgium and Chile, dogs have been deployed at Airports and Railway stations to sniff virus in common passengers.