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<article xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" dtd-version="1.0" article-type="healthcare" lang="en"><front><journal-meta><journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">IJCRR</journal-id><journal-id journal-id-type="nlm-ta">I Journ Cur Res Re</journal-id><journal-title-group><journal-title>International Journal of Current Research and Review</journal-title><abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="pubmed">I Journ Cur Res Re</abbrev-journal-title></journal-title-group><issn pub-type="ppub">2231-2196</issn><issn pub-type="opub">0975-5241</issn><publisher><publisher-name>Radiance Research Academy</publisher-name></publisher></journal-meta><article-meta><article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">4282</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="doi"/><article-id pub-id-type="doi-url"> http://dx.doi.org/10.31782/IJCRR.2021.132419</article-id><article-categories><subj-group subj-group-type="heading"><subject>Healthcare</subject></subj-group></article-categories><title-group><article-title>Protocols for Clinical Dental Care During Covid-19 Pandemic -__ampersandsignnbsp;Need of the Hour:__ampersandsignnbsp;A Retrospective Study&#13;
</article-title></title-group><contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author"><name><surname>J</surname><given-names>Moses</given-names></name></contrib><contrib contrib-type="author"><name><surname>SV</surname><given-names>Soumya</given-names></name></contrib></contrib-group><pub-date pub-type="ppub"><day>13</day><month>12</month><year>2021</year></pub-date><volume>4)</volume><issue/><fpage>100</fpage><lpage>104</lpage><permissions><copyright-statement>This article is copyright of Popeye Publishing, 2009</copyright-statement><copyright-year>2009</copyright-year><license license-type="open-access" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><license-p>This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) Licence. You may share and adapt the material, but must give appropriate credit to the source, provide a link to the licence, and indicate if changes were made.</license-p></license></permissions><abstract><p>Introduction: The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has emerged as a community health crisis and is spreading exponentially across the globe. Usually, there is a high risk of cross-infection between dentist/dental team and patient in a dental office set up. In this article, we recommend a revised policy of infection control in the dental office setting during this COVID __ampersandsignndash; 19 pandemic. Aim: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been challenging, especially in health care. As a dentist, we face several challenges such as protecting ourselves and our patients from cross-transmission of infection and at the same time we have to ensure that the patients continue to have access to dental care. Method: The documents of twenty dental staff including seven dentists, eight dental assistants, four nurses and one office staff who continued to work during the COVID-19 pandemic were selected for this retrospective study. In this study, we retrospectively evaluated amongst this twenty dental staff how many individuals developed symptoms of SARS COV-2, how many individuals were tested and amongst the tested individuals how many were tested positive and negative. Results: Among twenty dental staff, only seven staff were tested for SARS COV-2. Dental staff who developed any symptoms of COVID-19 or came in contact with confirmed COVID-19 patients were only tested for SARS COV-2. Among the seven dental staff who tested for SARS COV-2 were three dentists, two dental assistants, one dental nurse and one office staff. Amongst the three dentists only one turned to be positive, between the two dental assistants one turned to be positive and one dental nurse turned positive. So among the seven staff who were tested only three turned to be positive. Totally among the twenty dental staff, only three staff tested positive for COVID-19. Conclusion: Following the above-mentioned protocol proved to be effective in keeping the dental care workers safe and infection prevention in dental clinical areas. Since the protocols and guideline mentioned here seems to be effective the dental practitioners can revise their infection control protocol as the knowledge and information about SARS CoV-2 are evolving and maintain high standards of infection control.&#13;
</p></abstract><kwd-group><kwd> COVID-19</kwd><kwd> Infection control</kwd><kwd> Dental care</kwd></kwd-group></article-meta></front></article>
