Volume 7 • 2020 • Issue 4

Helping the Community in the EarlyDays of the Pandemic Dr. RobertWolanski Lakeside Dental Clinic and Vancouver Island Implant Centre In February, after reading about the novel coronavirus in Wuhan province, China, Dr. Robert Wolanski made a large order of personal protective equipment (PPEs) for his Nanaimo, B.C., dental practices. “Including N95 masks,” he says. “I stocked up.” T oward the end of the month, he’d planned to fly to Houston, Texas, for the International Congress of Oral Implantologists. “I started to get a little nervous about the virus, realizing it had begun to arrive in North America,” Dr. Wolanski says. He canceled his trip. In early March, he attended the Pacific Dental Conference (PDC) in Vancouver. First thing in the morning on March 16, Dr. Wolanski called an all‑staff meeting. “I came into the office that Monday knowing that wewould need tomake some changes,” he says. The group planned more intensive infection control, extra use of PPEs, scheduling patients at longer intervals, and reducing clinical work. “But then at 10 o’clock, we received the notice that public health authorities had given to our college to cease dental care.” No work was done that day. Instead, the group of 14 people discussed the potential severity of the nascent pandemic. “Many of us started crying, which I didn’t expect,” says Dr. Wolanski. “It wasn’t sadness, rather it felt like we were in a shared moment that had great meaning, which was emotional.” After the meeting, everyone went home and “we haven’t practised since,” says Dr. Wolanski. Soon after, he was told to self-isolate for two weeks because he had attended the PDC, where there were a few cases of the disease now called COVID-19. The Donation Toward the end of March, a representative from the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital called Dr. Wolanski, who is president of the Nanaimo District Dental Society, to say that the hospital needed PPE. “They were in dire straits,” says Dr. Wolanski. He contacted local dentists and over a period of three days they dropped off PPE and sanitizer at one of Dr. Wolanski’s practices. “I asked them to clear their shelves,” he says, “and they all responded with great generosity.” He got a call from the West Coast General Hospital in Port Alberni, which needed N95 masks and surgical gowns. “We ended up donating 4,000 procedure masks, 800 N95 masks and 29,000 gloves as well as assorted gowns. Anything that was surgical, I ssues and P eople 19 Issue 4 | 2020 |