In the deserted streets of Madrid where customers are scarce, taxi drivers who transport free sick or medical they provide crucial help to health personnel fighting against the coronavirus.
In the Madrid region, the most affected in this country, which accounts for more than 25,000 deaths from the Covid-19, more than 500 taxi drivers offer their services on the platform Ask for Taxi and they have made more than 100,000 free races.
“I drive every day that I have to work and if they request any sanitary service and I am the closest vehicle, I have the application open, I skip the application and leave, “says Gaby Sáez, 45, who has been behind the wheel of her taxi during the confinement in force since March 14.
He says he is not afraid of getting it, but he protects himself with a mask and gloves, scrupulously disinfecting his taxi after each trip.
“Right now we all have to contribute our grain of sand, what we can do is very limited,” he estimates.
Twenty visits a day
Thanks to the free services that taxis offer to the staff of 266 hospital centers in the region, doctors have been able to visit patients at their homes.
“Health centers call us to ask for a taxi, to take health personnel to medical visits, to the elderly, to people who have to go to cure or to people who are infected with COVID“, Explains the president of PideTaxi, Andrés Veiga.
This has reduced the influx of people to hospital centers and prevented them from transmitting the virus to health personnel.
“Right now we will have around 10, 15, 20 visits a day, with those health people” who attend people at their homes, says Veiga.
European health authorities have established as a priority to avoid transmission in health care centers, which in Spain is more imperative, taking into account that almost 20% of the more than 218,000 confirmed cases correspond to health personnel.
Essential and essential
The work of the taxis has been vital, according to the doctors.
“For me, it was essential (…), it was an essential service”, points out Sara del Carmen Vicente, a 23-year-old nurse at the 12 de Octubre hospital in Madrid.
“Apart from taking us to the homes, they waited at the door until you finished this address to take you to the next one. They had 100% availability and with all the quality and smile in the world, ”says the AFP news agency.
“They ask you every time they come, how are we doing, how are we on an emotional level?”he points out. “They are as if they were your family at that time,” he adds.
Videos of doctors and nurses thanking taxi drivers have been widely shared on social media. One of them shows a driver with tears in his eyes as he is applauded when entering a health center.
For Sáez, whose wife is also a taxi driver, seeing the health personnel collapse emotionally was very difficult.
“For me, the toilets today are more or less heroes and you try to reassure them, you try to become their handkerchief of tears,” he says.
“A complete reward”
Beyond their voluntary work, few of the 100,000 taxi drivers in Spain actually manage to work, with the limits on the number of taxis that can circulate set by the regional authorities in the face of restrictions on mobility.
“Revenue has dropped between 80 and 90%”, admits Tito Álvarez from Elite Taxi Barcelona.
“The day you have to work, as there are practically no taxis, because you work well. But it does not cover you, because you are working 5 days a month, “he says.
Although money is tight, Gaby Sáez says the worst thing is knowing that five companions died from the virus. “It strikes you,” he concedes.
But “to this day, I am very calm, it has not crossed my mind to stop doing the health services. (…) Because, truly, just seeing the gratitude that these people show towards us is a complete reward ”, he concludes.
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