Impact in the Medical Care Among the Rheumatic Diseases Patients in a Hospital in México During COVID-19 Pandemic

The National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition is a national reference center for rheumatic diseases that belongs to The National Institutes of Health, and has Federal founding. More than 8,000 patients with a wide variety of rheumatologic diagnosis receive medical care. On March 2020, the WHO announced COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. The first case was registered in Mexico on February 2020. In March 2020, the Mexican Government requested that our Institution should restrict health care to exclusively COVID-19 patients; accordingly, outpatient consultations were, and up to August 2020 still, hold on. Meanwhile, when possible, the Department of Immunology and Rheumatology has implemented an "on-demand", non-organized patient´s health care, through email and phone contact; nonetheless, and due to the middle-low socioeconomic status of most of our patients and limited technical resources available at our Institution, the attempt has been challenging.