Sir, it is widely accepted that dental schools need to teach curricula based on the principles of evidence-based dentistry. For many of us that instruction also includes teaching dental students the fundamentals of epidemiology and the basics of research methodology and study design. Increasingly, infectious disease outbreaks are receiving more attention due to the potential impacts of epidemics on an expanding global population and the fact that information in general is now disseminated much more rapidly than it was in 2003 when we had the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak.

Understanding how important outbreaks like SARS, Zika and most recently COVID-19, can spread so rapidly and their transmission curtailed should be of increasing concern for dental providers. In order to have comprehensive discussions with their patients about how infections can be transmitted in an epidemic, dental care providers need to be properly educated. However, very little time is allotted to instructing dental and dental hygiene students on public health approaches to interrupting disease transmission. Given these changes, dental educators should also focus on educating students on the most effective responses and interventions in controlling the spread of infectious disease. This could include an introduction to public health control measures such as environmental disinfection, facility closure, isolation of symptomatic cases, social distancing and health education, along with other approaches. Dental educators need to consider ways to formally incorporate instruction in best practices to prevent disease transmission and control of outbreaks into the dental curricula. In addition, we should also include online content that can provide the needed education to dental providers already in private practice. We have already started on developing these programmes.