Abstract

The outbreak of a newly recognized coronavirus in China's Hubei province in December 2019 marked the beginning of a new pandemic called coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We aimed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemics on the cellulitis patients to reveal possible health problems that may be encountered in the future pandemics. We have evaluated the demographics, clinical features, predisposing factors of cellulitis patients admitted to our department during lockdown period (March-July 2020) and the corresponding months of the previous, and following 2 years. The ratio of cellulitis patients to total number of patients was also evaluated. The rate of recurrent attacks was found to be significantly higher in the lockdown period (54.5%) compared to precovid (12.5%), restriction (23.1%) and unrestricted periods (10.8%), (p=0.011).Although the ratio of cellulitis patients to the total number of patients during the lockdown and restriction periods (0.21% and 0.19% respectively) were higher compared to precovid and unrestricted periods (0.14% and 0.13%, respectively), the difference between the groups was not statistically significant. The rate of the recurrent episodes of cellulitis is higher in lockdown period. Patients with a known history of cellulitis should be advised to take proper measures to prevent recurrent episodes in future pandemics.

Key words: Cellulitis, COVID-19, pandemic