Salvador Caetano Group in Porto/Portugal, shareholder of COBUS Industries GmbH in Wiesbaden/Germany, delivered a COBUS bus that will be used as a COVID-19 mobile testing unit in Matosinhos, a town within the Metropolitan Area of Porto, the location of the final body assembly factory of the well-known COBUS apron buses. The provision of this bus is based on an initiative and partnership between Salvador Caetano Group, Matosinhos City Council and Pedro Hispano Hospital.
The transfer of the bus took place on April 13, 2020, at Sant’Ana nursing home, where the staff, occupational health personnel and users were being tested. Patrícia Vasconcelos, CEO of Cobus Industries, António Taveira Gomes, President of the Board of Directors of Pedro Hispano Hospital and Luísa Salgueiro, President of the City Council of Matosinhos, among representatives of the Local Health Entity and the nursing home were present.
This mobile unit - operating on a COBUS 2700S, an airport bus - will test people across the municipality of Matosinhos. The bus will be driven by employees of Salvador Caetano Group, because of the specific driving features of this special airport bus. The size of the vehicle and the fact that it is extremely large inside with only a few seats and much free standing area – specific features of an airport bus – lead to an easy adaptation of the vehicle into a testing unit to enable this mission. The COBUS airport bus is the world market leader in this special segment, with more than 4000 COBUS operated on 350 airports in more than 100 countries.
COBUS and Salvador Caetano Group assumed their commitment in supporting the fight against the pandemic which we are currently experiencing: from the donation of individual protection equipment, the provision of vehicles to health professionals, to the readjustment of our mobility products and services, according to the new customer's requirements. We believe that – all together and with commitment – we will be able to mitigate the effects of the moment we live in.
COBUS hopes that it will get more occasions in other regions of the world to deliver such a mobile testing vehicle, either in the municipality areas with special road permit for this airport bus or on airports and seaports worldwide to test passengers on the apron side upon their arrival after leaving the airplane or ships. This application might become an important and imperative issue as soon as the contact and travel restrictions will be weakened and people will start travelling again. COBUS would be very happy to reach interested organizations and customers in order to be able to further contribute to fight against this pandemic.
