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Namibia trains dogs to detect coronavirus

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The University of Namibia’s School of Veterinary Medicine is training dogs to detect coronavirus, reports in the South African country have said.

The plan is to deploy the dogs at airports and borders, the Namibian newspaper quotes Conrad Brain, a physiology and epidemiology lecturer as saying.

Dogs have been proven 95% accurate at detecting coronavirus, veterinary lecturer Alma Raath adds.

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The project started two months ago, the Namibian reports, but it does not say when the dogs will be ready.

“Through international collaboration with veterinary schools in Finland and France, we are in the process of training our dogs, and by all indications, Covid-19 detection dogs are extremely effective in detecting people who are Covid-19 positive or negative. Once the training is complete, we aim to deploy the dogs were most needed, such as at airports and other ports of entry to Namibia,” Brain says.

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Colombia is one country which claims to have had success with a similar initiative, while Namibia, Finland and France are aspiring to achieve the same.

Brain says the initiative is a first for Africa, although dogs in Namibia have been trained to sniff out weapons and wildlife products with huge success in the past.

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The pilot project at Unam is conducted by a team of veterinarians, doctors, dog trainers, dog handlers and a legal expert at Neudamm near Windhoek.

 



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