Sterility Special Interest Group position paper on ART treatments and COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 pandemic caused a huge overload of healthcare systems worldwide For such reason, in a preventive manner, governments and scientific societies recommended to stop any elective medical or surgical treatment in order to reduce the eventual burden on hospitals Fertility treatments have since then been reserved only to urgent cases as oncologic patients asking for fertility preservation However, the relevance of such policy on natality rate and on ovarian aging has soon induced the main scientific societies to ask for a fast return to action, considering that infertility should be treated as an urgent condition In this regard, phase 2 recommendations have been issued to ensure working requirements to be settled in the safest way possible Therefore, the Special Interest Group on Sterility (GISS) of the Italian Society of Gynecology and Obstetrics (SIGO) and its federates released their guidelines as Italy has been one of the first Western countries to face the phase 2 restart of treatments