Dogs with jobs: Meet the pooches with impressive resumes | In Pictures

Meet Scarlett and Rizzo.

This adorable pair are part of a COVID-19 screening pilot program, using dogs to detect the virus.

“I thought if we had dogs in schools to screen the students it would be so much faster and less burdensome for schools,” said Dr Carol Glaser, assistant deputy director in Central Laboratory Services and medical officer for infectious disease laboratories at the California Department of Public Health.

“Remember when an antigen test is done at school, as opposed to home, there’s a whole bunch of rules and regulations that run under that. It’s not as simple as just handing those things out at school and having the kids do them,” said Glaser, who oversaw antigen testing programs at some California public schools.

For now, Glaser and her colleagues described in a new study the lessons they learned from the Covid-19 dog screening pilot program that they launched in some California K-12 public schools.

In their research, published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, they wrote that the goal was to use dogs for screening and only use antigen tests on people whom the dogs screened as positive – ultimately reducing the volume of antigen tests performed by about 85 per cent.

They wrote that their study supports the “use of dogs for efficient and noninvasive” Covid-19 screening and “could be used for other pathogens.”

They are now considering launching the program in nursing homes.

With reporting by CNN.