Thai scientists have unveiled a vaccine robot that speeds up jabbing by 20 per cent as the country battles rising Covid-19 cases.

The AutoVacc machine sucks up the solution from glass jars and fills syringes ready for them to be injected into waiting members of the public.

It can prepare 12 doses of AstraZeneca in just four minutes - an improvement of 20 per cent compared with the standard 10 doses.

Health officials claim the robot device can speed up the whole process by a fifth and allow more people to receive their AstraZeneca shots, which is the brand being given to most of the country's population.

It also extracts more of the vaccine from the vials compared with humans.

Footage shows the machine being unveiled at the prestigious Faculty of Engineering at the Chulalongkorn University after being developed alongside the Department of Medical Sciences and private funders.

Professor Narin Hiransuthikul said that until the machine was developed, health workers had to manually extract the extra solution from the 'dead space' in vials which took more time and was exhausting as they needed to do it every day for several months.

He added: 'This is fast and accurate and it helps to lighten the burden on medical personnel.

'Using the machine results in a 20 per cent increase in the number of vaccines being administered. It reduces the need for certain types of syringes designed to reduce the amount of vaccine left in the container. It is also safe with no contamination.'

Developers said the machine costs around 2.5 million baht to produce and they hope to make around 20 more in the coming months.

Juthamas Ratanavaraporn, the lead researcher of the team at the university's Biomedical Engineering Research Center said the machine guarantees they can gain 20 per cent from each vaccine vial .

She added: 'The extra 20 per cent that we get means that if we have AstraZeneca for 1 million people, this machine can increase the number of doses to 1.2 million people.'

Thailand has seen cases steadily rise as the Delta variant from India began spreading through the country in April.

There are 1,102,368 cases of the virus and 10,085 deaths as of August 25.

Officials have vaccinated around nine per cent of the population of more than 66 million people.