A multi-country survey on the impact of COVID-19 on dental practice and dentists’ feelings in Latin America

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Abstract

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly influenced the routine of healthcare workers. This study investigated the impact of the pandemic on dental practice and dentists’ feelings in Latin America.

Methods: A survey was conducted with dentists from 11 Spanish-speaking Latin American countries in September–December 2020. Professionals were invited by email and via an open campaign promoted on social media. The questions investigated dental care routines, practice changes, and feelings about the pandemic. Descriptive statistics were used to identify frequencies and distributions of variables. Proportions were compared using chi-square tests.

Results

A total of 2127 responses were collected from a sample with diverse demographic, sex, work, and education characteristics. The impact of COVID-19 was considered high/very high by 60% of respondents. The volume of patients assisted weekly was lower compared with the pre-pandemic period (mean reduction = 14 ± 15 patients). A high rate of fear to contracting the COVID-19 at work was observed (85%); 4.9% of participants had a positive COVID-19 test. The main professional challenges faced by respondents were reduction in the number of patients or financial gain (35%), fear of contracting COVID-19 (34%), and burden with or difficulty in purchasing new personal protective equipment (22%). The fear to contracting COVID-19 was influenced by the number of weekly appointments. A positive test by the dentists was associated with their reports of having assisted COVID-19 patients. The most cited feelings about the pandemic were uncertainty, fear, worry, anxiety, and stress. Negative feelings were more prevalent for professionals who did not receive training for COVID-19 preventive measures and those reporting higher levels of fear to contract the disease.

Conclusion

This multi-country survey indicated a high impact of the pandemic on dental care routines in Latin America. A massive prevalence of bad feelings was associated with the pandemic.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12913-022-07792-y.

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Most cited references 31

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An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time

Ensheng Dong, Hongru Du, Lauren Gardner (2020)

In December, 2019, a local outbreak of pneumonia of initially unknown cause was detected in Wuhan (Hubei, China), and was quickly determined to be caused by a novel coronavirus, 1 namely severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The outbreak has since spread to every province of mainland China as well as 27 other countries and regions, with more than 70 000 confirmed cases as of Feb 17, 2020. 2 In response to this ongoing public health emergency, we developed an online interactive dashboard, hosted by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA, to visualise and track reported cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in real time. The dashboard, first shared publicly on Jan 22, illustrates the location and number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, deaths, and recoveries for all affected countries. It was developed to provide researchers, public health authorities, and the general public with a user-friendly tool to track the outbreak as it unfolds. All data collected and displayed are made freely available, initially through Google Sheets and now through a GitHub repository, along with the feature layers of the dashboard, which are now included in the Esri Living Atlas. The dashboard reports cases at the province level in China; at the city level in the USA, Australia, and Canada; and at the country level otherwise. During Jan 22–31, all data collection and processing were done manually, and updates were typically done twice a day, morning and night (US Eastern Time). As the outbreak evolved, the manual reporting process became unsustainable; therefore, on Feb 1, we adopted a semi-automated living data stream strategy. Our primary data source is DXY, an online platform run by members of the Chinese medical community, which aggregates local media and government reports to provide cumulative totals of COVID-19 cases in near real time at the province level in China and at the country level otherwise. Every 15 min, the cumulative case counts are updated from DXY for all provinces in China and for other affected countries and regions. For countries and regions outside mainland China (including Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan), we found DXY cumulative case counts to frequently lag behind other sources; we therefore manually update these case numbers throughout the day when new cases are identified. To identify new cases, we monitor various Twitter feeds, online news services, and direct communication sent through the dashboard. Before manually updating the dashboard, we confirm the case numbers with regional and local health departments, including the respective centres for disease control and prevention (CDC) of China, Taiwan, and Europe, the Hong Kong Department of Health, the Macau Government, and WHO, as well as city-level and state-level health authorities. For city-level case reports in the USA, Australia, and Canada, which we began reporting on Feb 1, we rely on the US CDC, the government of Canada, the Australian Government Department of Health, and various state or territory health authorities. All manual updates (for countries and regions outside mainland China) are coordinated by a team at Johns Hopkins University. The case data reported on the dashboard aligns with the daily Chinese CDC 3 and WHO situation reports 2 for within and outside of mainland China, respectively (figure ). Furthermore, the dashboard is particularly effective at capturing the timing of the first reported case of COVID-19 in new countries or regions (appendix). With the exception of Australia, Hong Kong, and Italy, the CSSE at Johns Hopkins University has reported newly infected countries ahead of WHO, with Hong Kong and Italy reported within hours of the corresponding WHO situation report. Figure Comparison of COVID-19 case reporting from different sources Daily cumulative case numbers (starting Jan 22, 2020) reported by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE), WHO situation reports, and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Chinese CDC) for within (A) and outside (B) mainland China. Given the popularity and impact of the dashboard to date, we plan to continue hosting and managing the tool throughout the entirety of the COVID-19 outbreak and to build out its capabilities to establish a standing tool to monitor and report on future outbreaks. We believe our efforts are crucial to help inform modelling efforts and control measures during the earliest stages of the outbreak.

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SARS-CoV-2 infection of the oral cavity and saliva

Ni Huang, Paola Perez, Takafumi Kato … (2021)

Despite signs of infection-including taste loss, dry mouth and mucosal lesions such as ulcerations, enanthema and macules-the involvement of the oral cavity in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is poorly understood. To address this, we generated and analyzed two single-cell RNA sequencing datasets of the human minor salivary glands and gingiva (9 samples, 13,824 cells), identifying 50 cell clusters. Using integrated cell normalization and annotation, we classified 34 unique cell subpopulations between glands and gingiva. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) viral entry factors such as ACE2 and TMPRSS members were broadly enriched in epithelial cells of the glands and oral mucosae. Using orthogonal RNA and protein expression assessments, we confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in the glands and mucosae. Saliva from SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals harbored epithelial cells exhibiting ACE2 and TMPRSS expression and sustained SARS-CoV-2 infection. Acellular and cellular salivary fractions from asymptomatic individuals were found to transmit SARS-CoV-2 ex vivo. Matched nasopharyngeal and saliva samples displayed distinct viral shedding dynamics, and salivary viral burden correlated with COVID-19 symptoms, including taste loss. Upon recovery, this asymptomatic cohort exhibited sustained salivary IgG antibodies against SARS-CoV-2. Collectively, these data show that the oral cavity is an important site for SARS-CoV-2 infection and implicate saliva as a potential route of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

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A Consensus-Based Checklist for Reporting of Survey Studies (CROSS).

Akash Sharma, Nguyen Minh Duc, Tai Luu Lam Thang … (2021)

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Author and article information

Contributors

Rafael R. Moraes:

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1358-5928

rafael.moraes@ufpel.edu.br

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Health Serv Res

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Health Serv Res

Title: BMC Health Services Research

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1472-6963

Publication date (Electronic): 25 March 2022

Publication date PMC-release: 25 March 2022

Publication date Collection: 2022

Volume: 22

Electronic Location Identifier: 393

Affiliations

[1 ]GRID grid.411221.5, ISNI 0000 0001 2134 6519, Universidade Federal de Pelotas, ; Rua Gonçalves Chaves 457, Pelotas, RS 96015-560 Brazil

[2 ]GRID grid.412866.f, ISNI 0000 0001 2219 2996, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo, ; San Agustin Tlaxiaca, Mexico

[3 ]GRID grid.441990.1, ISNI 0000 0001 2226 7599, Universidad Catolica de Santa Maria, ; Arequipa, Peru

[4 ]GRID grid.442270.7, ISNI 0000 0000 9080 0466, Universidad Autónoma de Asunción, ; Asunción, Paraguay

[5 ]GRID grid.412251.1, ISNI 0000 0000 9008 4711, Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, ; Quito, Ecuador

[6 ]GRID grid.430676.0, ISNI 0000 0004 0570 8542, Universidad Iberoamericana, ; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

[7 ]GRID grid.443909.3, ISNI 0000 0004 0385 4466, Universidad de Chile, ; Santiago, Chile

[8 ]GRID grid.441837.d, ISNI 0000 0001 0765 9762, Universidad Autónoma de Chile, ; Santiago, Chile

[9 ]GRID grid.108311.a, ISNI 0000 0001 2185 6754, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua, ; Managua, Nicaragua

[10 ]GRID grid.11630.35, ISNI 0000000121657640, Universidad de la República, ; Montevideo, Uruguay

[11 ]GRID grid.442253.6, ISNI 0000 0001 2292 7307, Universidad Santiago de Cali, ; Cali, Colombia

[12 ]GRID grid.267525.1, ISNI 0000 0004 1937 0853, Universidad de Los Andes, ; Mérida, Venezuela

[13 ]GRID grid.441858.4, ISNI 0000 0001 0689 1156, Universidad Privada Franz Tamayo, ; La Paz, Bolivia

Author information

Rafael R. Moraes https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1358-5928

Article

Publisher ID: 7792

DOI: 10.1186/s12913-022-07792-y

PMC ID: 8951658

PubMed ID: 35337336

SO-VID: 2c6cea76-ccf0-4086-99db-843484c63a30

License:

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

History

Date received : 5 November 2021

Date accepted : 4 March 2022

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Health & Social care

Keywords: dental care,personal protective equipment,covid-19 testing,fear,professional practice

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ScienceOpen disciplines: Health & Social care

Keywords: dental care, personal protective equipment, covid-19 testing, fear, professional practice

A multi-country survey on the impact of COVID-19 on dental practice and dentists’ feelings in Latin America

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Abstract

Background

Results

Conclusion

Supplementary Information

Related collections

Novel Coronavirus Disease COVID-19

Most cited references 31

An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time

SARS-CoV-2 infection of the oral cavity and saliva

A Consensus-Based Checklist for Reporting of Survey Studies (CROSS).

Author and article information

Contributors

Journal

Affiliations

Author information

Article

History

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