When SEAT S.A. directors and employees sat down at the beginning of 2020 to discuss their plans for the year, they were in a celebratory mood. The Barcelona-based automotive manufacturer had just reported record car sales and was preparing to mark its 70th anniversary with a series of special events across Spain.
It was then that the company’s medical team, led by Dr. Patricia Such, SEAT’s Health, Safety and Emergencies director, sounded a note of caution. Multiple reports from SEAT sources in China and Italy suggested that a newly identified coronavirus was far more serious than was being reported in the media — and that it was only a matter of time before it reached Spain.
So, 70 years after SEAT first started helping turn Spain into a modern, car-owning society, the company swung into action to help its home country respond to one of the greatest challenges of our time70 years after SEAT first started helping turn Spain into a modern, car-owning society, the company swung into action to help its home country respond to one of the greatest challenges of our time.
“As a major Spanish company with such a long history, we felt that it was our duty to help society overcome the crisis,” says Dr. Such. “From the beginning of the pandemic, we put all our resources and our capacities at the disposal of our country. We reinvented our company.”
Almost immediately, SEAT converted one of its production lines to making emergency ventilators for Spanish hospitals. Repurposing automobile gears, gearbox shafts and windscreen wiper motors, a team of about 150 produced more than 600 emergency ventilators, saving lives across the country at a critical time. Elsewhere in the plant, workers switched from upholstering and sewing car interiors to making thousands of surgical facemasks for frontline workers.
“The more that you invest in prevention, the less you will have to spend later in solving health problems.”
Dr. Patricia Such, Health, Safety and Emergencies director, SEAT S.A
When the first wave of the pandemic receded and car production restarted, SEAT implemented more than 100 safety measures and carried out thousands of antigen tests a day. “In the midst of a global pandemic, we turned the company into a Green Zone,” says Dr. Such. “Our workers were safer in here than they were outside.”
SEAT’s success in combatting Covid reflects its long tradition of combatting health risks in the workplace, strongly supported by its works council and CEO Wayne Griffiths. In the years before the pandemic, the company established a CARS Health Care and Rehabilitation Center for workers and a scientific committee devoted to health issues. The company is also responsible for the health and safety of all employees in Spain of the giant Volkswagen Group, of which it is a long-standing subsidiary.
“We have understood for many years that allocating budget to prevention is not an expense, but an investment,” says Dr. Such. “When the pandemic started, it did not catch us off guard.”
Along with vaccinating over 90% of its own workforce, SEAT is working to protect vulnerable people across Spain. The company has helped accelerate the rollout of vaccines to the general population, including supplying medical motorhomes to health services on Spanish islands to immunize people living in remote locations.
And as one of the largest investors in research and development in Spain, SEAT has also allocated significant resources to vaccine research. The company is supporting efforts by Barcelona-based Dr. Bonaventura Clotet, one of the world’s leading virologists and a long-term associate of the company, to develop vaccines that will work against future Covid-19 mutations.
“The virus will keep on mutating,” according to Dr. Such. “As a society, we have to continue to follow safety precautions and keep on investing in research. At SEAT, we have shown that it pays to be prepared for anything.”
