Nanoscent’s founder Oren Gavriely told Times of Israel that together with the overt symptoms of COVID-19 such as fever, coughing and shortness of breath, the virus also transforms the smells created by people’s bodies and breath.

“Each illness has a special pattern; some are more minute and some are more significant,” said Gavriely. “When you are looking at coronavirus, it develops in the upper respiratory tract — that means in the nose, the lungs and also in the tonsils.”

Gavriely added that several scientific studies conducted in the laboratory and on pigs suggested that other coronaviruses that also develop in the nose, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, could be identified with an analysis of nasal exhalations at an earlier stage, when they are still incubating on the fourth day of infection.

“Biologically speaking, different viruses develop in different places,” he said. “The coronavirus develops in the nose. And because it develops there, it changes how our breath from the nose smells.”

Dozens of trial participants have already been successfully tested with the nasal device for coronavirus infections.  Magen David Adom (MDA) has begun incorporating the testing method into their drive-thru testing stations located across Israel. The Poriya Medical Center in Tiberias and Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv have also followed suit.

Dr. Orna Barash, director of research at Nanoscent, consulted with WHO professionals and researchers to adapt their chip design for analyzing the breath of coronavirus patients. The device now consists of a disposable plastic bag attached to an exhaling pipe (developed by the South Korean DreamTech company) which fits into the nostril. This entire piece is connected to the “nasal scent recorder,” a box with the chip to analyze breath. Within 30 seconds, the chip completes its analysis and sends the results to the cloud. From there, results can be sent to any device. After each use, a pneumatic device of valves and pumps cleanses the recorder.

“This is the training phase of the device, like training a dog for a new smell, to enable the software to create a pattern,” Gavriely said.

Prof. Gili Regev-Yochai, Director of the Infection Prevention and Control Unit at Sheba Medical Center, is overseeing the trial, and nearly 100 subjects have been enrolled in the training phase. During this phase, scent samples are being collected from coronavirus patients in order to design an analytic model to accurately differentiate between people who are infected and people who are healthy. The eventual goal is to reach 1000 participants in order to make the model more accurate in diagnosing the virus.

“We have already developed a model,” Gavriely said, which he adds is highly accurate. “As it is a machine learning technology, it is constantly improving.”

Regev-Yochai explained that without a vaccine, mass screening is “probably the most important thing we have” to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the idea is to deploy the sniff technology for mass screening at all ports of entry.

“The startup’s technology has been found to be more effective than expected in very early results,” said Regev-Yochai. “It is very sensitive, and that means if we can put a station at the entrance to all locations, it won’t miss detecting anyone who is positive. And this could help a lot.”

Nanoscent already has a letter of intent from two major airlines to use the screening devices at their check-in counters. The testing process would be similar to biometric identification at border control.

“During check-in, you can breathe in there and confirm you have nothing, before you board the flight,” said Gavriely, envisaging biological testing stations at every airport entrance just like security apparatus.

Will the technology eventually replace traditional lab testing for the virus? No, stressed Gavriely. When a breath test produces results positive for the virus, the person would likely be quarantined until lab test results confirm the diagnosis.