MONTREAL -- Since the COVID-19 crisis began, dentists across Quebec were ordered by the government to treat emergency cases only.

Dr. Treena Coull from the NDG Dental Clinic was one of them. With clinics now being given the green light to open, she’s wondering if she’ll be ready. She said she’ll need a new ventilation system that can stop germs from spreading before she opens.

“Otherwise I’ll have to wait between 45 minutes and two hours between patients in order to, as they say in their protocol, wait for the aerosol to settle,” she said.

Coull – like all Quebec dentists resuming their work imminently – will also need a significant amount of personal protective equipment, which is hard to come by.

“I have been on back-order lists and waiting for equipment since April,” she said. “I knew there were certain things I was going to need, masks, they’re saying we need gowns, surgical caps, visors…”

In standard practice, regular surgical masks and visors are the norm among dentists, who work in close contact with their patients. Now, they’re being told they have to wear N95 masks as an added precaution. 

According to Dr. Douglas Hamilton, a dentist in Westmount, dentists already wear level-three surgical masks, which are “quite adequate.”

“For us, it’s frustrating to be mandated to wear masks which are unavailable, which will be taken away from the hospital workers that need them, and then we can’t work without them,” Hamilton said.

Some dentists have said the new measures are so limiting that they won’t be able to open on Monday, outside of emergency cases like the ones they’ve been seeing since the start of the pandemic.

The association representing dentists says that some people with delayed dental treatments can’t wait any longer.

“These are people that had emergencies that were not extremely painful or life-threatening that were able to be treated, if you wish, by phone, by doing tele-dentistry at the time,” said Dr. Gerald Riley, from the Quebec Association of Dentists.

Those patients may have to wait longer if their dentists are among those unable open in the coming days.