COVID-sniffing dogs are traveling on tour with Metallica, Black Keys

nypost.com:

Detection K9. “We basically screen anyone that has access to the backstage, so the crew, talent and management, and so on.”When touring with musicians, the dogs stays in luxury hotels and sometimes — like with the rockers of Tool, who are on the road now — even get to ride on the tour bus. “Other artists might have a driver that transports the dogs in their own vehicle from show to show,” Johnson told The Post.But the peace of mind that these canine detectives can provide doesn’t come cheap.“Costs vary from $5,000 per day for an individual event to significantly lower for ourextended services, such as teams embedded with artists or organizations,” Johnson said.In pre-Omicron variants of COVID, Johnson’s dogs would approach a line of people and after smelling their hands or feet, sit down in front of anyone they believed to be infected.But as Omicron accumulates more in the bronchial passages and not in the sweat glands, it means the dogs now sniff out people’s worn masks.

Bio Detection’s pooches have over 10 years of experience screening for viruses, bacteria and fungus, mostly working in partnership with the United States Department of Agriculture.At the end of 2018, Johnson was training his dogs to detect the mosquito-borne West Nile Virus, when the pandemic changed everything.Johnson, an Air Force vet who had worked with dog units in Afghanistan and Iraq in the2000s, began training his pack to see if they could detect COVID — his theory being that, as dogs are biologically predisposed to sniff each other to see if they have something wrong with them, then they should be able to sense viruses in humans.