Spanish taxi driver hailed a hero for driving Covid-19 patients for free, tests negative

SPAIN – Saturday (Apr 18) A video on Twitter went viral after a taxi cab driver in was called into a hospital on the pretence that he was there to pick up a patient.

The driver, whose name was not released, has apparently been picking up Covid-19 patients and bringing them to and from the hospital, without charging them anything.

According to mothership.com, the taxi driver walked into the hospital in order to collect the patient he thought he was there to fetch, instead, he was greeted with tons of applause by hospital staff of the Ramon y Cajal Health Centre in Alcorcon. One medic also handed him an envelope filled with cash to show their gratitude for his very kind deeds.

And that wasn’t the only surprise the compassionate cabbie was going to receive. He was also given an envelope, being told, “This is a gift for you.” Inside were his Covid-19 test results showing that he had tested negative for the virus. The short video shows the driver visibly moved to tears, not able to say anything over the happy news and was just seen shaking his head in disbelief.

“Es una sorpresa que le hemos dado a un taxista que lleva a pacientes sin cobrar al hospital.Le hemos dado un sobre con dinero y una dedicatoria.Le hemos llamado para decirle que tenía que hacer un traslado y ha sido muy emocionante. No paraba de llorar.”
Gracias a el y a ellos. pic.twitter.com/CcXX1BVfko

— #ElTaxiUnido (@eltaxiunido) April 18, 2020

When he was finally able to speak, he simply said, “Thank you,” with one of the hospital medics replying, “Thank you for helping us.”

The video has 153 thousand likes, 2.7 thousand comments, 49.2 thousand retweets and has at least 12.7 million views. According to The Independent, Jesus Santos Gimeno, who happens to be the Deputy Mayor of Alcorcon City Council, was one of the people that shared the video, saying “In solidarity, we will get out of this.”

According to worldometers.info, as of April 23, at 11:11 GMT, Spain has 213,024 total cases of Covid-19 positive cases and 22,157 deaths, being one of the hardest-hit European countries aside from Italy. Bloomberg.com reported that Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has decided to ask lawmakers to extend the country’s lockdown from April 25 to May 9 rather than lift it prematurely. PM Sanchez explained, “Spain has contained the brutal attack of the pandemic. The gains aren’t enough yet, and they are fragile. /TISG