A medical team in Rome announced Wednesday that they are teaching dogs to recognize COVID-19 samples, with the hope of using the dogs for mass-testing in the future.

The project, which began 10 days ago at Rome's Bio-Medico University Hospital, envisions training dogs to detect the presence of the coronavirus in human sweat.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, researchers in countries around the world including Finland, Germany, France and the United Arab Emirates have launched sniffer dog trials.