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They’re loyal, diligent – and have unbeatable noses. Could dogs play a key part in the fight against the pandemic? A single-storey building in a lonely rural business park, a few miles from Milton Keynes on a grey autumn day. It looks like a location for a bleak thriller: where a kidnap victim is held, perhaps, or the scene of a final shootout. Inside,...

What does a disease smell like? Humans might not have the answer, but if they could talk, dogs might be able to tell us. Able to sniff out a range of cancers and even malaria, canines’ extraordinary noses are now being put to the test on Covid-19. Nicola Davis hears from Prof Dominique Grandjean about exactly how you train dogs to smell a virus,...

Researchers around the world are training canines to sniff out the virus – could they be deployed for mass testing?Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageIt is simple and pain-free, could be used to test for coronavirus in care homes, airports and schools, and might just be more realistic than the UK government’s £100bn “Operation Moonshoot” mass screening plan. Its name? Fido.Around the...