England's urgent dental care hubs facing PPE shortages and fit testing delays with some dentists resorting to scuba masks

Following the suspension of routine care,​ the network was meant to provide urgent care for dental patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. But a British Dental Association (BDA) poll has found:​

The slow roll-out in England has seen millions left without access to urgent care across whole regions. Yorkshire and Humber, one of the last regions to start getting a service up and running in recent days, is now reportedly already struggling to manage demand for urgent care, which includes cases of broken teeth and abscesses, which can be life threatening if left untreated.

Despite progress on bringing sites live, chronic shortages of PPE, together with a lack of training and fit testing, continues to leave many teams unable to treat patients.

Sites in the East Midlands have reported kit being requisitioned for use elsewhere in the health service. The BDA understands the scale of these shortages has led some dentists in the South East to actively explore alternative sources of PPE, including non-medical equipment, such as scuba masks.

NHS England had previously operated a distinction between ‘hot’ sites for COVID-19 symptomatic patients and ‘cold’ sites for treatment of other patients, including vulnerable populations. While that approach has now been dropped, it has left limited supplies of key PPE concentrated in a relatively small number of hot sites.

Active centres also appear to be operating at significantly lower than expected capacity given the need to follow stringent decontamination procedures and social distancing guidelines, with reported patient volumes falling from forty patients per surgery per day pre-pandemic, to eight.