Coronavirus | Robots deployed for COVID-19 patients at Chennai hospital

In a bid to prevent doctors and medical staff from getting infected with coronavirus, a Chennai hospital had deployed robots to serve food and medicines to COVID-19 patients or people infected with the disease. The step has been taken by Chennai's Government Stanley Medical College and Hospital to contain the spread of the deadly disease as it follows the concept of social distancing.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has advised physical distancing for people around the world to prevent community-level transmission of COVID-19.

Supplying food and providing medicines to coronavirus positive patients in hospitals has remained a challenge. This is why humans are taking the help of machines.

Earlier this month, a field hospital staffed with 14 robots opened in the Hongshan Sports Center in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic began.

The robots, supplied by Beijing-based robotics company CloudMinds, can clean and disinfect, deliver medicine to patients and measure their temperature.

In India, the Sawai Man Singh Government Hospital in the Rajasthan capital Jaipur is conducting a series of trials on a humanoid robot to check if it can be pressed into service for delivering medicines, and food to the COVID-19 patients admitted there.

This could potentially reduce the chances of the hospital staff contracting the infection, hospital officials said.

Besides, Kerala-based startup Asimov Robotics has developed a three-wheeled robot that it says can be used to assist patients in isolation wards.

This will include helping with things like food and medication, something that nurses and doctors have been doing so far, putting them at larger risk of contracting the virus.

The idea of robots taking up jobs previously done by humans may feel dystopian but scientists believe machines can free up human hospital medical staff while limiting the spread of the virus.

With PTI Inputs