President’s Message

Thoughts on the COVID Crisis

I have been practicing now for two and a half months in this coronavirus environment. The staff and I are acclimating to procedural changes. The “Helicopter” management style necessitated by the confusion and fear from a few months ago has subsided, thank God, and we are settling into the new COVID-19 patient flow strategies for dentistry. The two months of “authority” recommended closure was a challenge. I furloughed all the staff. A few key team members were on call to help with emergencies and to clear the schedule for the upcoming week. The angst of unemployment was eliminated when my employees started receiving more from the Employment Development Department than they received from working. I, like many employers in the state, had issues with that policy and it created problems when the employees were asked to come back to work. Dwindling cash flow from outstanding insurance claims and patient billing made me question my ability to pay bills in April. A PPP loan and finally the EIDL came to the rescue on April 16 and May 12. The PPP loan came with the 8 week forgiveness restriction that made it necessary to burn through the proceeds in order to have it forgiven and I had to have the same full time equivalent employees on the payroll by June 30. 7 weeks from the date of my PPP funding, the 8-week time limit was changed to 24 weeks, so decisions I made were based on the initial rules. We all can appreciate changing rules in the middle of the game. I put my staff back on the payroll April 16 working remotely from home on a 40 hour a week schedule for hourly wages equivalent to what they were making from EDD. We agreed that the PPP wages would last until June 11, the end of the PPP Loan forgiveness period (the original 8-week forgiveness rule), after which their pre-COVID-19 wages would take effect. The PPP loan is taxpayer money so even though it seemed irrational to me, I became the unemployment department and the employees were happy. It is always better to work with happy staff. With the supplemented salaries I managed to exhaust all PPP funding in 7 weeks. On May 12, here in El Dorado County, we started seeing all patients again. Our hygienists, knowing their profession has the highest risk for contracting COVID-19, were reluctant to see patients. We had ample supplies of KN-95s, face shields, and disposable gowns. Each operatory was equipped with an electrostatic air purification unit that circulates air down from the head position of the chair and exhausts cleaned air up behind the delivery unit to mitigate aerosol production. Incoming patients are interviewed for recent exposure risk, symptoms, and their temperature is taken. They were made aware of way to minimize aerosol production during the hygiene appointment. It required a lot of coaching and hand holding. As August begins, the hygiene department is operating smoothly, and no one has contracted Sars-CoV-2.

By Carl Hillendahl, DDS 2020 SDDS President

With Sars-CoV-2 it is commonly understood that transmission is primarily from aerosols and droplet exposure within 3 feet of the source. Fomite and surface exposure are an insignificant means of transmission. Antibody production is related to the severity of disease. Asymptomatic patients do not develop antibodies and hospitalized COVID patients will develop significant antibodies, but immunity dissipates with time suggesting that a patient can get it again. Coronavirus will become endemic within the population and future control is dependent on improved therapeutics and vaccines. Coronaviruses as a group do not produce long lasting antibodies in humans. In the development of the vaccine, the initial thought on protocol is that one inoculation followed by a booster will confer immunity for a season. Annual coronavirus inoculations, like the annual flu shot, may become a strategy for COVID-19 public health control. We will get through this. Identify where lies the risk, wear respiratory protection, and wash your hands. I do miss the camaraderie of in person meetings. 