Proposal for a provisional protocol for the care and identification of dental transmission routes of COVID-19 in Latin America: A Literature review

BACKGROUND: The new coronavirus called COVID-19 originated in the city of Wuhan, China and has currently spread to different continents, leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a “pandemic”. Therefore, the aim of this review was to present a new proposal for a care protocol in Peruvian Dentistry: Provisional review of the diagnosis, treatment, epidemiological characteristics, routes of transmission and recommendations of COVID-19. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A search of digital scientific literature was made in the databases: Science Direct, Pubmed and Google Scholar. The Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT: “Covid-19” “Dental” “Routes of transmission. They were included Scientific articles published in English between December 2019 - March 2020. RESULTS: Different studies were found mainly of epidemiological, observational and experimental design. On March 6, 2020, the President of the Republic of Peru confirmed and declared in Peru the beginning of the first case of coronavirus. According to reports from the Ministry of Health (MINSA) as of July 30, there are: PCR (+) 108, 299; Rapid test (+) 292, 384 positive cases and 18, 816 deceased with a lethality of 4.7%. CONCLUSIONS: Within the limitations of this literature review, the presence of the virus is inevitable in dental practice. The dentist must understand the evolution of this microorganism like all vulnerable professionals in the health sciences. Key words:COVID-19, dentistry, Peru, protocol, routes of transmission.