translated from Spanish: IMSS advances two months of pension to 7,000 seniors for COVID-19

In order to prevent them from taking to the streets, the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) advanced the two-month payment of the pension to 7,000 retired eligibleers who do not have banking services and who usually collect at the institution’s offices.
“Yesterday and today we made an effort, because we have retired holders who are not banked and who go to the delegation every month, or even to the headquarters of Social Security, to collect their pension; it’s about 7,000 across the country,” said IMSS director Zoé Robledo. 
“What we did was pay them the two months, this April, the month of May and a check for the next month (June), so that they do not have to leave next month, so that when we are at a different time, at a different stage, they do not have to leave.”
Read: IMSS calculates hospitalizing 30 thousand eligible persons for COVID-19; peak will be at the end of April
After participating with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on a supervisory tour at the 32nd General Hospital in Villa Coapa, cdMX, which was enabled to care for people infected with coronavirus, Robledo said that another measure to avoid exposing to the outsideient to vulnerable schoolers was to issue a million resurtable prescriptions for two months. 
“One of the efforts that began two weeks ago is the resurgent prescription, a prescription already given to them in these visits made by patients in vulnerable groups — hypertensive, diabetic, even pregnant women — where they are already given this month’s prescription and those of the next two months,” he explained. 
“From these resurgable recipes we have already reached the million, so that they no longer have to leave and, if they have to, their relatives do so with an established protocol that is also done by a means of a telephone exchange that they can call.”
The official added that the possibility that the application for work disability process could be carried out remotely was also enabled. 
“Covid-19’s disabilities for all people who need them, rightholders, workers, can already do this permit for 14 days and can do it remotely, they no longer need to go to their unit (doctor), see their doctor, give them disability, go to the bank and return home, because all those transfers, those displacements, increase the chances of contagion, or that, if they feel bad, they can infect someone else,” he said. 
States approve welfare state reform
President Lopez Obrador disclosed that most state congresses approved the reform of Article Fourth Constitutional which enshrines the right to social programs. 
Read: IMSS will give patients medicines for three months to avoid going to their clinic
He said that, after the Congress of Mexico City on this day endorsed the constitutional amendment, only its enactment by the federal executive was pending. 
With the reform, the Mandate detailed, the continuity of programs such as the pension for older adults, financial support for children with disabilities, scholarships for students of all levels of education and the universal free of medicines are guaranteed. 
López Obrador called the constitutional amendment a “great social reform”.
“It is to elevate these programs to constitutional rank. No one will be able to, no ruler will be able to take these rights away, because it is a constitutional reform,” he raised. 
“There is a transitional article which states that it is necessary to always allocate sufficient budget to these pensions, scholarships and public health, that is, by law there must always be sufficient money and the budget of one year forward to that exercised in a previous year must always be more than that exercised in a previous year, the budget always has to grow. That’s in the Constitution, it’s a big social reform.”
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Original source in Spanish