As Egypt is facing a second wave of Coronavirus, Mechatronics Engineer, Mahmoud el-Koumi  is carrying out trials on a self-funded prototype for a remote-controlled robot to assist physicians in running tests on suspected Covid-19 patients.

The robot was made in a bid to limit human exposure to disease carriers, at a private hospital in Egypt’s Nile Delta city of Tanta.

The robot Cira- 03 was shaped to have human like face and head so as to put patients at ease and carry our different kind of test which include taking blood tests and temperatures, performing echocardiograms and X-rays, and displaying the results to patients on a screen attached to its chest.

It administers diverse tasks while reminding them to wear their masks. It has also been developed to perform pain-free PCR swab tests.

According to the inventor, ‘”This robot is specially designed to help the medical staff during Covid-19 times. It is a medical robot capable of multi-tasks, it can deal with patients in their beds, chest scans, fever screening, and face mask detection.” Mahmoud el-Koumi reports positive feedback from patients.

Egypt was one of the first African country to kick off its Covid-19 nationwide vaccination campaign with China’s Sinovac and plans to receive millions of vaccines from Russia, China and AstraZeneca between May-June 2021.

The country currently reports 1,322 confirmed covid cases with 173,567 recoveries and 13,651 deaths.