London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Oct 07, 2025

Latin America's police dogs turn noses to COVID

Latin America's police dogs turn noses to COVID

Their highly superior sense of smell has long been used to sniff out drugs, weapons and dead bodies. Now Latin America's crime-fighting police dogs are being trained to detect COVID-19.

In El Salvador, police are using artificial aromas similar to the sweat of a person infected with the coronavirus to train dogs.

"It's not so easy, because the COVID-19 strains seem to be changing a lot," said Wilber Alarcon, a canine handler from the Central American nation's anti-narcotics police.

"But the ones that are known have been synthesized and pseudo-aromas have been extracted to train the dogs," said Alarcon, who was in Mexico for a regional canine training exercise.

Alarcon expects COVID-19 sniffer dogs to soon be patrolling airports, bus terminals and border posts in his country, one of seven to attend the drills in Mexico's eastern state of Veracruz.

"The dog detects and marks the infected person, a strict biosafety protocol is activated, and you are reducing the risk that a person, or others close to the infected person, may catch the virus," he said.

Dogs are believed to have up to 300 million olfactory receptors—far more than humans—that give them their superior sense of smell.

Studies have suggested that they can detect the virus even in asymptomatic patients.

It is not the first time that dogs have been trained with artificial scents—they are also used to teach them to sniff out drugs or explosives.

In crime-plagued Mexico, where 80,000 people officially went missing between 2006 and 2020, the aromas include "putrefied, fresh or drowned corpse."

'Infallible animals'


In Mexico's northwestern state of Sonora, state and private organizations already have six dogs in operation and are training about 30 to detect the coronavirus, Juan Mancillas, head of "Canines Against COVID," told AFP.

They include breeds such as Golden Retrievers, Labradors, German Shepherds and Belgian Shepherds.

Similar programs are being carried out elsewhere in the region in response to a pandemic that has left more than 700,000 people dead across Latin America and the Caribbean.

In Chile, a squad from the Police Canine Training School has been deployed in the capital Santiago and there are plans to extend the initiative to other parts of the country.

In Europe, meanwhile, Czech trainers have reported a 95-percent success rate in COVID-19 detection in samples of human scent by dogs—seen as a fast, effective and pain-free method.

In Britain, the charity Medical Detection Dogs is also hoping to harness the power of canine noses that it says can smell other human illnesses such as cancer, Parkinson's disease and malaria.

In Miami, dogs have been deployed to sniff out COVID-19 infections among fans going to watch basketball.

Their new role in the pandemic is no surprise to handlers of the Veracruz state government's K9 Company of sniffer dogs, worth an estimated $24,000 each.

So powerful is their sense of smell that in 2016 they located a body buried three meters underground—a national record.

Several years later they detected a shipment of marijuana covered with thick layers of motor grease and coffee.

"They're infallible animals. They're never wrong. Humans are wrong," said K9 Company trainer Daniel Valentin Ortega.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×