At this juncture it seems like most people are tired of hearing about this COVID-19 virus. Since its first few cases were confirmed in Ghana in March 2020, people held their breaths and waited for it to blow over. As it stands now though, its best we accept it as the new normal and continue our lives as we know it with a slight modification: COVID-19 at the back of our minds.
COVID-19 is a new variant of a virus which comes from a family of corona viruses that primarily attack the respiratory system. People with the virus may present with various symptoms such as high temperature(fever), tiredness(fatigue), muscle pain(myalgia), headache, sore throat, dry cough, inability to smell (anosmia), inability to taste(dysgeusia), vomiting, diarrhoea, pink eye(conjunctivitis) etc
Whilst some people who get infected may never show signs until the virus completes its cycle and leaves their system, others with diabetes, heart disease and hypertension, the elderly and a few others may experience the worse forms of this life-threatening disease. Interestingly, some very healthy individuals have also been hit hard by this novel virus leading to their death. Enough of the virus, how does it affect your dental appointment?
Dentists have been identified as one of the professionals most at risk of contracting this virus because of the region in which we work, the amount of aerosols produced by most of our equipment and the proximity within which we work on patients. This means that if certain measures are not put in place, your dentist may easily get infected through: a COVID-19 positive patient’s saliva, speech, a probable cough or sneeze in the course of treatment or even just from touching a positive patient or a place a positive patient may have touched within a certain time frame… and then possibly transmit it to you too.