Indian Army has trained canines to detect Covid-19 virus for a quick and a real time situation for easier movements of troops. These canines — ‘Chippiparai’ and ‘Cocker Spaniel’ — have been deployed at transit camps of the force in Delhi and Chandigarh. The Cocker Spaniel is two-years-old and is named Casper, and Chippiparai is one-year-old and is named Jaya.
A live demonstration on the use of military dogs (Chippiparai and Cocker Spaniel) to detect COVID-19 on the basis of urine and sweat samples of individuals was carried out at 48 Military Veterinary hospital New Delhi. Three dogs perfectly detected the positive COVID-19 samples randomly mixed with negative samples. The COVID-19 pandemic has assumed alarmingly high proportions of morbidity and mortality amongst human populace world over. Positive and suspected samples were obtained from Military Hospital, Meerut Cantt and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Subharti Medical College, Meerut for the purpose of training. Army dogs were successfully trained on specific biomarkers emanating from urine and sweat samples of positive patients. Scientifically, it is evident that affected body tissues release unique volatile metabolic biomarkers which are used as disease signatures for detection of disease by the medical detection dogs.
A concerted effort has been made to train an Indigenous breed of dog ‘Chippiparai’ under PM’s initiative of “Aatmanirbhar Bharat” and also a ‘Cocker Spaniel’ to detect the volatilome of COVID-19 disease from urine and sweat samples of positive cases by comparatory method. The sensitivity and specificity of both the dogs obtained from the screening of 279 urine and 267 sweat samples during the initial trial procedure was found to be very high.
