Miami Heat is working on getting fans back in the stands, with the help of some furry animals. The Heat will use COVID-19-sniffing dogs at the American Airlines Arena to screen fans who want to attend their games in person.
They have been working hard to put this plan in action over the past several months. These dogs are highly trained and have been in place for some games during this current season where the team has allowed a handful of guests. Mostly just friends and families of players and staff.
A limited number of ticket holders will be in let into the arena, provided they get past the dogs first.
‘If you think about it, detection dogs are not new,’ stated Matthew Jafarian, the Heat’s executive vice president for business strategy. “You’ve seen them in airports, they’ve been used in mission critical situations by the police and the military. We’ve used them at the arena for years to detect explosives.”
The very first Heat game allowing ticket holders will take place this Thursday against the Los Angeles Clippers. Today is the first day that season ticket holders will be able to start reserving their seats.
Over the past 451 consecutive games, The Miami team has sold out. We can clearly see that sellouts may not be happening this year. The team will keep the attendance in the arena under 2,000 for now, or less than 10% of the arena’s typical capacity.
“Please note that seating will be very limited, as we will be observing proper physical distancing,” Miami Heat stated in its letter to this year’s season ticket holders.
The COVID-19 sniffing dog idea is currently being used in airports in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Helsinki, Finland over the past several months. At Miami Heat games, season ticket holders that will be arriving for the game will be brought to a screening area and the detection dogs will walk past. If the dog keeps walking, the fan is cleared; if the dog immediately sits, that is a clear sign the dog detects the virus and the fan immediately be denied access.
Also, under additional protocols: A health screening questionnaire will be mandatory for all guests, masks must be worn and only soda and water will be sold. All transactions will be cashless and if a fan starts to feel ill during the game, isolation rooms will be provided.
If there are fans that are allergic to dogs, the team will be offering an option to skip the dog screening and submit to a rapid antigen test instead. The Het say those test results can come back in as little as 45 minutes.
Dogs have a very high sense of smell, which is why dogs are often used by law enforcement to locate everything from drugs to bombs to missing people. Medical researchers have reaped the benefits of such canine sniffing, training some dogs to detect when a human is dealing with too much stress, not enough blood sugar and can even sense certain cancers.
“Researchers are finding out that specifically trained dogs can detect COVID on humans quickly and accurately,” Jafarian said.
