Crossposted:https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/117273/making-a-bracha-on-a-smell-test

The fact that is is Besamim may be very relevant. As I understand it, smelling spices and similar grown items gets a Bracha but artificial smells do not. (No source, I heard this many years ago.) My guess though is that this would be similar to questions regarding medicine - e.g., perhaps like a chewable vitamin which is Derech Achila (unlike a pill swallowed whole) but for purely medicinal purposes.

I really don't understand the point of this test. Not everyone who has COVID loses their sense of smell. Also, they ask the child if they smell? What's to stop them from saying they do?

@robev I 100% agree. Smell is the easiest thing to fake an answer to, unless you start including non-smelling items in a blind test - and then the people will claim they smelled something in the air (which could really be true). I think that's why the non-contact thermometer tests are so popular - you can't fake it. (Well, unless you take tylenol an hour before you go to the store/school/etc., but nobody would ever do such a thing, right?)

Mod note: The main point of comments is to discuss potential improvements to the post at hand. For tangent discussions, consider using chat. UPDATE: This note was based on a concept from Stack Exchange that I had in my head, but that hasn't been firmly adopted here. We'll discuss commenting in Meta. I've undeleted the previously-deleted comments, and my suggestion to take this tangential discussion to Chat stands as a suggestion.

IMHO: You’re not smelling it because you enjoy the smell. You’re smelling it because you’re taking a smell test. I’d think there’s no bracha to be made.

@robev when i had covid, i didn't realize i had lost my sense of smell until the following saturday night. the test may not weed out malicious rodfim, but it will alert people to something they might not have realized. (to weed out the rodfim, they could potentially give you one of two smells each day and ask if it's mint or cinammon)