US: Schools in Massachusetts deploy dogs Duke & Huntah to sniff out COVID cases

As the COVID-19 cases continue to witness a rise, dogs are being used to detect the virus in schools in Massachusetts. Two dogs named Huntah and Duke visited Norton Middle School for detecting cases of the deadly virus. Duke and Huntah after graduating in July 2021, became the first law enforcement K9s in the country who have been trained to trace viruses.

Bristol County Sheriff’s Office took to their Twitter handle and posted the pictures of the two dogs, Huntah and Duke, and revealed that the two dogs visited Norton Middle School for COVID-19 detection. The 14-month-old Labrador retrievers have so far carried out the COVID-19 detection work at 15 different schools in Massachusetts. Jonathan Darling, Bristol County Sheriff's public information officer, told CBS News that the dogs “love to work”.

Huntah and Duke trained for detecting COVID-19

Jonathan Darling informed that the police department contacted the Forensic Center at Florida International University in 2021, reported CBS News. The police department wanted to know information related to the emerging study on dogs that showed that they can detect COVID-19 odours. He pointed out that the study suggested that dogs are 90% more reliable for detecting odours related to COVID-19 and had a very low false positivity rate. 

Darling added that the Florida International University used the trained dogs to detect COVID-19 in schools, state emergency operations, as per the news report. In 2021, Duke and Huntah were given training and they used to practice with face masks of people infected with COVID-19. The two dogs graduated in July and were the first law enforcement K9s in the US. After Duke and Huntah graduated, the sibling puppies have detected COVID-19 in three different school districts, police stations, a local health department, town halls and office buildings.

COVID-19 situation in Massachusetts

According to the statistics given on the website Mass.gov, as of 6 January, 24570 new COVID-19 cases have been reported in Massachusetts taking the overall tally to 1,159,950. 43 new fatalities have been reported due to the virus taking the total number of deaths to 20,051. The number of people who have been hospitalised due to COVID-19 is 2,524 and people who have been admitted to ICU are 416. 

Image: Twitter/@BristolSheriff