The advice from the Outbreak Management Team (OMT) to the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (VWS) to scrap the corona measures raises many questions among dental care providers. They wonder which measures still apply to both employees and patients.
National guideline still unchanged
The minister has not yet taken a decision about which advice from the OMT will be adopted or about the timeframe for changing or scaling down the policy. A decision on this is expected around mid-March. After the decision has been made, RIVM will adjust the LCI guideline COVID-19. Until then, the current national advice and rules apply.
Commission Guideline Oral Care Corona follows national guideline
The Guidelines for Oral Care Corona Committee (CLMC) follows the national advice of the RIVM. The CLMC is awaiting the aforementioned decision and subsequent changes. These changes will be weighed for oral care and then processed as quickly as possible. For now, the current Guideline Mondzorg Corona still applies, which means:
Testing in case of complaints
If you have symptoms consistent with COVID-19, you stay at home and do a corona test. A PCR test is not mandatory, a self-test is sufficient.
Negative test result (no COVID-19)
With a negative test result, you can go to work with mild complaints (without fever). If the symptoms persist, test yourself again after at least 24 hours. As long as you continue to have respiratory complaints, you wear a surgical mouth-nose mask type II/R during contact with patients and colleagues.
Positive test result (with COVID-19)
If you have a positive test result, you will remain in isolation at home until you are symptom-free for at least 24 hours and fever-free for 48 hours. This applies from a minimum of 5 days to a maximum of 10 days after the onset of symptoms. As long as you continue to have respiratory complaints after the isolation period, you will wear a type II/R surgical mouth-nose mask when contacting patients and colleagues.
Deployment of dental care workers after contact with an infected person
If a housemate or close contact has tested positive for COVID-19, you can go to work if you have no complaints yourself. In practice, you wear a surgical mouth-nose mask type II/R and keep a distance of 1.5 meters from your colleagues. This applies up to and including 10 days after the last contact with the infected person. If you do get symptoms, you stay home and do a test.
Patients and oral care
There is no longer a strict corona triage for patients who want to visit a dental care practice. The patients are divided into 2 groups:
- Group A: Persons without COVID-19
For patients without COVID-19, there is no restriction on visits to the oral care practice. - Group B: Individuals with COVID-19
For patients with COVID-19, oral care is limited to emergency care. The work instruction Emergency Care COVID-19 in the Dental Practice for Patient Group B from the Guideline applies to this.
To the Dental Care Guideline Corona
