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California launches nation's first disaster relief fund for undocumented immigrants
New $125m fund will support those ineligible for federal support, but who make up 10% of the state’s workforce, largely in essential services

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Finding virus carriers—especially those with no symptoms—is among the biggest hurdles to addressing the pandemic.

But what if dogs can do that? Scientists in London say that dogs could in fact revolutionize the hunt for Covid-19 by sniffing out subtle odors produced by the virus when within the human body. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is crowdfunding a project to train canines to detect healthy-seeming people who haven’t necessarily realized yet they are carriers. If the project is successful, the animal detectives could be working across Britain by the summer.

“It’s very early stages,” says James Logan, head of LSHTM’s Department of Disease Control. “We know diseases have odors — including respiratory diseases such as influenza — and that those odors are in fact quite distinct. There is a very, very good chance that Covid-19 has a specific odor, and if it does I am really confident that the dogs would be able to learn that smell and detect it.”

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Some people experience Covid-19 as nothing more than a mild cold, and others exhibit no symptoms at all. Then there are the thousands who sicken and, often, die. Scientists are working hard to understand the underlying reasons for such huge discrepancies in symptoms and outcomes. No one knows the answer yet. One theory: It is locked deep in our genetic makeup.