New Delhi: In a move designed to reduce the risk of healthcare professionals getting infected while treating Covid-19 cases, Chennai’s Stanley Hospital has deployed robots to serve food and medicines to the infected patients.

Tamil Nadu Health Minister C. Vijayabaskar, who visited the hospital on Friday to check the functioning of the ‘robotic nurses’ in isolation wards, was given a demonstration by one of the robots who carried a jar of water, a tumbler and a bottle of hand sanitizer to a pre-determined spot.

In a similar move, the Sawai Man Singh Government Hospital in Jaipur is conducting trials on a humanoid robot for deploying it at the hospital.

A three-wheeled robot that can be used to assist patients in isolation wards has been developed by a Kerala-based startup named Asimov Robotics.

Earlier, Chinese city Wuhan, where the pandemic began, had deployed 14 robots to serve the patients at a field hospital in Hongshan Sports Center.

The robots were programmed to clean and disinfect, deliver medicine to patients and measure their temperature.