Paws for thought with Finnish airport operator

Last month saw Finnish airport operator, Finavia, welcome some canine companions as part of state-funded efforts to detect travellers with coronavirus at Helsinki Airport.

Studies conducted by the University of Helsinki show that sniffer dogs are able to smell the virus with almost 100% certainty. They are also capable of detecting the virus within 10 seconds.

“As far as we know no other airport has attempted to use canine scent detection on such a large scale against COVID-19,” said Finavia Airport Director Ulla Lettijeff. “This might be an additional step forward on the way to beating COVID-19.”

Reliable scent

Trained by Wise Nose, the Helsinki Airport ‘Covid-19 sniffer dogs’ don’t have direct contact with a person. Passengers simply undergo a sample swipe on their skin, which is then dropped into a cup and given to a dog in a separate booth. This also protects the dog’s handler from the risk of infection.

According to Wise Nose, dogs can identify the virus days before the symptoms have even started, something that laboratory tests fail to do. In addition, they can also identify COVID-19 from much smaller samples than the PCR tests used by healthcare professionals. The difference is massive. A dog requires just 10-100 molecules to identify the virus, while lab equipment requires 18,000,000 molecules.

Sniffer bot

It’s not only dogs that are being considered as an alternative method to conventional testing to detect COVID-19. In the US Koniku, a biotechnology start-up, is working on developing robots that could sniff out COVID-19 infections faster than conventional testing. Similar to the way in which sniffer dogs at Helsinki use biological clues to detect the virus, Koniku’s device, known as the Konikore, has been programmed to detect signature smells released by ailing cells. The technology fuses neurons with a silicon chip to create a “smell cyborg” capable of detecting scents ranging from explosives to pathogens. In a recent field test in Alabama conducted by law-enforcement officials and aerospace giant Airbus SE, Konikore was able to detect explosives better than trained dogs.

Koniku plans to conduct field trials with Airbus at Changi Airport in Singapore and then San Francisco Airport later this year.

Chloe (Wilson) Greenbank wrote her first airline magazine nearly two decades ago and has been immersed in aviation magazines ever since. She is a highly experienced editor and reporter who has worked for over a decade in the publishing sector specialising in the global aerospace industry. As senior editor at one of the world’s leading travel media companies, Ink, she was tasked with launching and overseeing various titles including two inflight magazines for Brussels Airlines. With a solid understanding of the inflight market, she has also contributed to magazines for airlines including easyJet, MyTravel, Thomas Cook, Virgin Express, Ryanair, British Mediterranean Airways, Air Burkina and Korongo Airlines.

In 2017 Chloe moved over to the B2B publishing industry when she joined HMG Aerospace for whom she edits Regional Gateway and contributes to a number of titles including LARA and Inflight. She also contributes to the Times Aerospace Group’s African Aerospace. Having strengthened her knowledge and understanding behind the global aviation community Chloe has been a working journalist on the Emerald Media team since early 2018, primarily supporting its client Air bp.

BlueSky Business Aviation News | 8th October 2020 | Issue #576

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