COVID-19 and the eye

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Well, it seems like eons ago when I did this previous blog post. In re-reading that who would have thought we would end up where we are now.

A couple quick things to comment on. In a recent study it was shown that the virus is not transmitted in tears. This study was only 17 people but was very well done. None of the 17 had traces of the virus in their tears. Now to be clear you can still inoculate yourself through the mucus membranes of the eye but new tears do not seem to shed virus as far as we know currently.

The second thing to comment on is signs of conjuctivitis or "pink eye" associated with the virus remain very low, at about 1%.

In the office we have installed breath shields on our microscopes and changed how we interact with patients to minimize chance of contamination. We are fortunate that our office is not a place where sick people go and we do not have the aerosol issues that our dental colleagues have to deal with. There is always risk, and we will do the best we can to minimize and control those risks once we get back in the flow of taking care of our patients.


Dr. Jason

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