NASCAR will test a new COVID-19 screening procedure for the Sunday’s Cup Series race at Atlanta Motor Speedway with the use of trained dogs.
The process which is going to be carried out as a trial is the next step taken by NASCAR to limit the spread of the disease.
“We think that these dogs and this capability is going to allow us to rapidly confirm that all of those people entering the essential footprint on Sunday — that’s race teams, that’s NASCAR officials, that’s the vendors that work inside the garage — all those folks are COVID-free or not,” said Tom Bryant, NASCAR managing director of racing operations. “The ability to do that has kind of been the math problem that we have continuously tried to solve since March of last year.”
NASCAR will use COVID-sniffing dogs at the garage entrance at Atlanta. Everyone who goes in the garage will be checked. NASCAR says use of the dogs is as effective as a PCR test.
— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) March 16, 2021
The idea is to have two teams of dogs screen essential personnel. The highly trained dogs take less than 30 seconds to find out if the disease is present or not. As a 20-year U.S. Army veteran, Bryant knows the effectiveness that trained dogs can bring.
“They are amazing,” Bryant said. “This gives us essentially an ability to test that essential population on race day and know right away that those folks who have cleared this enhanced screening process with a very high degree of confidence are COVID-free. We’ll learn from what we do Sunday, and we’ll figure the ways to best employ this capability moving forward to ensure that we’re keeping the population as safe as we can, keeping the least amount of risk in the environment.”
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