The future of sniffing dogs at the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport coronavirus is unclear when funding for the four-month project ends at the end of 2020, says the news syndicate Lännen Media.
The state’s € 300,000 grant has funded existing trainers and dogs, but has not covered the cost of schooling new snuff dogs.
"If we start training dozens of dogs, it would cost tens or hundreds of thousands of euros. We don’t have the money until we start seeing the pilot’s results," said the deputy mayor of Vantaa Timo Aronkytö. "We need to see if the state gets more funding."
So far, about one percent of the samples smelled by dogs have returned to positive.
A study to assess how accurately dogs have detected the coronavirus is scheduled to begin in a few weeks.
Crown-smelling dogs began their work in September
The city of Vantaa, which is responsible for airport health security, decided to get the dogs working by promising research into detecting their virus.
Passengers being tested will enter small, screened areas where they will take skin wipe samples as instructed and drop them into a container. The dog and its trainer are waiting behind a sieve where the animal smells each sample. The purpose of the arrangement is to protect people allergic to dogs from direct contact with them, while protecting handlers from possible exposure to the virus.
No personal information is collected at the test point. Anyone who receives a positive result will be directed to the Uusimaa Hospital District (HUS) health information point for instructions on further action.
Source: The Nordic Page