Antwerp (Belgium) (AFP)
When Belgian patients fearing they may have been infected with the coronavirus go to the university hospital in Antwerp, the first face they see is not that of a masked nurse but of a vaguely human robot.
The device, built by the Belgian company Zorabots, greets the new arrivals and reads the patient data provided by a questionnaire completed beforehand by the potential patient.
The robot takes their temperature and makes sure they are wearing a mask correctly before assessing the probability and severity of the infection and directing them to the appropriate part of the clinic.
This is certainly not a diagnosis, but it is a useful step which reduces the contacts of the medical team with potentially infected patients before their admission to hospital.
"If the patient has a temperature or is not wearing his mask correctly, the following message appears on the screen:" you have a problem, you cannot enter the hospital directly, "explains doctor Michael Vanmechelen.
"You must then be examined. The robot never works alone, it always acts in support of a hospital employee who works there," he adds.
In this period of gradual return to normal, after confinement of the population which lasted more than two months in Belgium, "there will be a multitude of people who will have to be tested," said Fabrice Goffin, one of the co-directors of Zorabots.
"The advantage of this robot is that it can check not only the patient's temperature but also if he is wearing a mask," he adds.
With more than 9,000 deaths, Belgium has recorded one of the highest death rates in the world per number of inhabitants. A figure which is however to be taken with certain precautions since Belgium includes in its balance sheet even cases not confirmed by a test but simply suspect when a person dies in a retirement home where cases of coronavirus have been discovered.
© 2020 AFP