COVID-19 outbreak: An overview on dentistry

Coronavirus disease 2019, also called COVID-19, is the latest infectious disease to rapidly develop worldwide. COVID-19 has as its etiologic agent the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2): the 2019 coronavirus is different from SARS-CoV, but it has the same host receptor: human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). SARS-CoV-2 was first discovered in 2019 in Wuhan, China, unfortunately spreading globally, resulting in the 2019–2020 pandemic, as declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The infection started in Asia, but it has rapidly spread across the world: according to the WHO, this is the first pandemic caused by a coronavirus. Against this landscape, the treatment of COVID-19 is based on containment measures: in China and South Korea, the severe application of such interventions has regularly and drastically reduced new cases, and this experience shows that a reversion of epidemic growth is possible in the short-term.