JEDDAH: A group of Saudi students have developed a device that scans patients as they arrive at public places, such as health clinics, and alerts staff if a visitor’s temperature is unusually high.
A fever, or elevated temperature, is a common symptom of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
Their design combines temperature detection with an alert mechanism and sanitization system that can disinfect belongings, such as cellphones and wallets, using ultraviolet light.
The device was created as a graduation project by students from the College of Telecom and Electronics in Jeddah. They wanted to work on something that was “useful and productive (and) of service to the people,” their professor, Majed Al-Sorihi, told Al-Ekhbariya TV.
Student Adel Al-Thobaiti, who is studying industrial electronics and automatic control engineering, said the team was inspired by a desire to help tackle the challenges created by the pandemic.
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Their design combines temperature detection with an alert mechanism and sanitization system that can disinfect belongings, such as cellphones and wallets, using ultraviolet light.
“It became necessary to create health checkpoints around general facilities,” he said. “We wanted to scale up the traditional in-person testing method to something that was more suitable to the current crisis.”
The project was completed within two months, and is now entering the marketing and sales phase, the team said.
Saudi health officials on Tuesday reported four additional deaths related to COVID-19.
The death toll in the Kingdom now stands at 6,359. In addition, 223 new cases of the disease were confirmed, which means 366,584 people in the Kingdom have contracted it. Of these cases, 2,108 remain active and 333 patients are in critical condition. The Ministry of Health said 56 of the latest cases are in Riyadh, nine in Makkah and 10 in Madinah.
A further 203 people have recovered, bringing the total number of recoveries in the Kingdom to 358,340. A total of 12,082,062 PCR tests have been carried out, including 44,642 in the past 24 hours.
Meanwhile, the Emirate Of Makkah province posted a reminder on its official Twitter account of the precautionary measures that are in place for wedding celebrations and other social gatherings: The number of attendees must not exceed 50 people, the duration of the event should not be more than five hours, and guests must wear masks at all times.
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