Mail.ru Group and Sberbank, based on Citymobil, have launched a single free taxi service for doctors in 12 Russian cities. Mail.ru Group reported this on Monday, December 14.
“Citymobil will connect 800 partner cars to organize a taxi for medical workers. They will take doctors to appointments free of charge, quickly and in compliance with the necessary safety measures, including to patients with coronavirus who are undergoing home treatment, ”the statement said.
It is specified that 145 million rubles will be allocated for this campaign – the funds will be used to pay for rides to drivers and compensation in case of illness, as well as to protect against the spread of infection, including protective partitions between the passenger and the driver, regular disinfection. Taxis from this park will serve only doctors.
Special vehicle fleets will appear in 12 cities: St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Ufa, Omsk, Kazan, Rostov-on-Don, Yaroslavl, Saratov, Ulyanovsk, Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk and Volgograd. The transportation of medical workers will be serviced by 30 to 150 vehicles in each city.
The free taxi program for doctors will run from December 21 to January 31, 2021.
Yandex announced the start of the Help Nearby program, which is also aimed at supporting physicians in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. As part of the program, free taxi transfers of doctors and the delivery of food, drugs and tests for COVID-19 are organized.
Earlier, at the end of November, more than 40 regions with a difficult situation due to the coronavirus confirmed the need for a free taxi for doctors, said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko.
On November 19, he instructed the Ministry of Digital Development to work out the possibility of creating centralized funding for a single taxi service to help doctors move around the city and deliver medicines to outpatients, Vedomosti reports.
The authorities of a number of Russian regions informed about the allocation of the necessary financial item for this measure to support doctors. Tatarstan announced the allocation of 90 million rubles from the budget until the end of 2020 for the travel of doctors by taxi. The experience of Kazan was also used by other Russian cities, including St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod and the Krasnodar Territory.