NORTH RIDGEVILLE, Ohio — Doctors Ankur and Nisha Gupta are partners in life and at work, as co-owners of North Ridgeville Family Dentistry. When COVID-19 first hit in March, they decided to proactively close the practice.
“We wouldn't wait until a mandate came around. We would just close the office and keep people safe,” said Dr. Ankur Gupta.
But in those 2 months they were closed, they still had work to do.
“We knew that we wouldn't be able to start back up until we had appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) for ourselves and our team,” said Dr. Gupta
They took the time to go above and beyond the necessary PPE.
“We have air purification units. We wore gowns from head to toe. We covered our hair, our face and everything,” said Dr. Nisha Gupta.
When they opened their doors again, they said, yes, some of their patients are still apprehensive.
“People who were like, dude, I just don't want to go anywhere, especially to a place where there's spit and blood all over. So those people didn't come in,” said Ankur Gupta.
But he said, for the most part, they’ve been extremely busy and their extra precautions have been beneficial.
“The entire team felt safe. We felt safe. Patients coming in felt safe,” he said. “There's probably plenty of people who are apprehensive, but we're not thinking about those people because there's a decent number of people who are comfortable coming.”
Now, they’ve added another level of protection, as the couple and the majority of their staff received the first dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine at Lorain County Public Health on Wednesday.
“I thought, first, it was amazing that we were put in the 1a category. I was very thankful for that and I think I just felt relief,” said Nisha Gupta.
Lorain and Medina counties are among the first in northeast Ohio to administer vaccinations to dental workers.
Cuyahoga and Summit counties have not started administering the vaccine to dentists, yet, but expect to soon.
Dr. Gupta said while this may make some of his patients feel more comfortable at the dentist, if anything, he just wanted to be a part of the bigger solution.
“I think they're going to feel more comfortable as numbers of COVID positive cases decline, as the burden on hospitals and health care systems decline, I think those will be much greater indications of normalcy than the fact that their dental office staff got vaccines,” he said.
