DENTISTRY IN THE POST COVID-19 WORLD

With the advent and widespread use of vaccines against the COVID-19 virus, the world finally seems ready to begin its journey into the post COVID era. Like the rest of the world, dentistry had also grind to a halt. Aerosols, a routine byproduct of our work had now morphed into a carrier of a potentially fatal disease, for both patients and dentists alike. All the focus during this pandemic was on limiting aerosol generation and its expulsion from the dental offices so that they can stay open to provide services to the community and also sustain the families and households attached to these practices.Like the previous pandemics, which served as stepping stones towards better infection control practices, the COVID-19 pandemic actually served as a validation of the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and Health Technical Memorandum (HTM) 105 guidelines in helping to protect dentists from this disease. One large scale survey conducted by the American Dental Association on 2400 dentists found that less than 1% were afflicted by the virus. Those afflicted had actually contracted the disease from family members, and not their practices. This shows that while following the minimum standards w