Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Prosthodontics and Restorative Dentistry, School of Dentistry, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Rwanda, Remera Campus, Kigali, Rwanda
  • 2 Faculty of Dentistry, SEGi University, Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia, Phone: +60 361451780, e-mail: anithakrishnan@segi.edu.my
J Contemp Dent Pract, 2021 Apr 01;22(4):325-326.
PMID: 34266997

Abstract

In March 2020, the world that we know irrevocably changed forever. It feels like "Groundhog Day" all over again, and it seems that the nightmare is here to stay. It all began on the January 8, 2020, when China grimly announced that coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is caused by the "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2" (SARS-CoV-2)1 but it was not until March 2020 that the situation swiftly careened out of control and is unequivocally posing the greatest challenge to humanity worldwide since the end of the Second World War. While the scientific community heroically galvanized itself and raced against time to provide viable solutions to this formidable foe in the form of vaccines, the worldwide dental fraternity has had to grapple with an extraordinary situation evolving in real-time and ensure that we responded robustly to this daunting health emergency that has spared no corner of our beloved planet. Initially, COVID-19 ensured cessation of all non-urgent dental care in most parts of the world but with increasingly significant inputs about the nature of the pathogen from the scientific community, the dental community has been able to cobble together a workable plan in reconfiguring and restructuring the dental practice in consonance with the situation at hand. It is fiendishly arduous to estimate the massive impact on the dental profession, but it is safe to assume it to be substantial.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.