Dogs may become the low-tech new screening tools to make air travel safer during COVID-19. Some airports, like LAX, use temperature screenings to detect passengers who are ill before they pass through security but now, the Helsinki Airport has hired a team of specially trained canines to catch COVID-19.

According to Fast Company, dogs are well-known for their ability to sniff out many diseases. Recently British researchers were awarded a contract to train bio-detection dogs as a rapid-testing measure for COVID-19. The U.K. government partnered with the Medical Detection Dogs charity and several universities to develop the program.

“When you have a disease, whether it’s a virus or a parasite, it changes the body odor, so you actually smell differently. We’ve demonstrated this already with diseases like malaria, for example,” professor John Logan head of London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who is involved in the program, told Euronews.

“And we know for other diseases like certain types of cancers, Parkinson’s, even detection of epileptic seizures or blood sugar levels, that dogs do this with a very high level of accuracy,” he added.

 Researchers at the Veterinary Facility at the University of Helsinki successfully taught their charges to detect COVID-19 from people’s sweat. A total of 16 dogs are now working at Helsinki airport to identify passengers who are infected with the virus, according to International Airport Review.

The canines can detect COVID-19 with as little as a 10-molecule sample compared to current testing that requires 18,000,000 molecules. The results are accessed in minutes, without the discomfort of a nasal swab.

Passengers rub their skin with a wipe which is dropped into a cup. To ensure anonymity, the dogs sniff the cup in an isolated booth, according to Fast Company. Passengers who are suspected of being ill are sent to the airport’s information area.

Researchers said that besides being a valuable tool for airports, COVID-19 screening dogs would also be an asset to nursing homes.