Dental Asia May/June 2020

Clinical Feature
The coronavirus has been
affecting mankind since 2019
with high morbidity and
mortality rates. Up to 25 th
April 2020, 2,830,082 people
were infected worldwide and 197,245
people have died from respiratory failure.
The World Health Organisation has declared
this a pandemic since 11 th March 2020,
representing global public health concern.
By Dr. Kevin Ng and Dato’ Dr. How Kim Chuan
Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and
the Food and Agriculture Organisation of
the United Nations (FAO).
Health workers face high risks in treating
patients, and need to protect themselves
and staff, since social distancing is
impossible to achieve especially with the
presence of aerosol in dental office during
treatments. The purpose of this article is
An Update on SARS-CoV-2 and the
Effect on Dental Practice based on
WHO Guidelines
Discussion
The last time the WHO declared a pandemic
was in 2009 for H1N1 influenza outbreak.
Past examples include HIV, Swine Flu, and
the 1918 Spanish Flu. Although there is
no special threshold or set rules such as
cases number and death, a pandemic means
that there is widespread human-to-human
transmission globally, with unknown cure
strategy. The latest update from WHO
(April, 2020) reported over 0.8 million
people infected, with over 20,000 fatalities
in different countries. The number is still
increasing. The American government has
predicted the death rate will be 10,000 –
24,000 in America alone.
Viruses, and the diseases they cause,
often have different names. Viruses are
named based on their genetic structure
to facilitate the development of diagnostic
tests, vaccines and medicines. Virologists
and the wider scientific community do
this work, so viruses are named by the
International Committee on Taxonomy
of Viruses (ICTV). Diseases are named
to enable discussion on disease
prevention, spread, transmissibility,
severity and treatment. Human
disease preparedness and response
is WHO’s role, so diseases are officially
named by WHO in the International
Classification of Diseases (ICD).
to report updated information available
from the WHO, Centre of Disease Control
(CDC) in the United States, and National
Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom
in order to make recommendations for
practicing dentists to ensure safety to
patients, the dental team and their families 1 .
ICTV announced “severe acute
respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
(SARS-CoV-2)” as the name of the
new virus on 11 th February 2020. This
name was chosen because the virus is
genetically related to the coronavirus
responsible for the SARS outbreak of
2003. While related, the two viruses
are different.
WHO announced “COVID-19” as
the name of this new disease on 11
February 2020, following guidelines
previously developed with the World
Deaths from COVID-19 according to WHO on 25 th April 2020
Cases of COVID-19 according to WHO on 25 th April 2020
The coronavirus
Virus are large pleomorphic spherical
particles of about 120um in diameter, with
bulbous projections on the outside. The viral
envelop consists of a lipid bilayer where the
Membrane (M), Envelop (E) and Spike (S)
structural protein are anchored. A single
stranded RNA genome in continue beads on
string conformation form the nucleocapsid
inside. The S protein from coronavirus
44
DENTAL ASIA MAY / JUNE 2020