Pokaa, a Covid-19 sniffer dog, sniffs a training sample in Kunheim, France. AFP

Gulf Today Report

The 2-year-old dog, Pokaa, is employing his retrieving skills to help fight against the spread of COVID-19 at the Roselière care home in Kunheim in the northeastern French region of Alsace.

Pokaa is 48 hours quicker than a PCR laboratory test, by just sniffing sweat samples. No need to stick anything up in the nose to carry out a nasal swab.

Working since last week, near the town of Colmar, Pokaa is the first French sniffer dog to be used in the fight against COVID-19.

Pokaa simply needs to sniff a piece of cloth, which a patient has kept under an armpit for five minutes. After sniffing a number of samples, the dog will sit before those, which he considers positive.

Those patients identified as potentially positive by Pokaa are then given PCR tests to confirm the dog's findings.

Pokaa has been found to be 100 percent accurate for symptomatic sufferers and 95 percent for those without symptoms. He gives immediate results.

The dog has been trained by the charity Handi'chiens to recognise the protein spike, which the coronavirus uses to enter and infect healthy cells. He has no trouble with any of the variants currently circulating.