On Wednesday a public appeal was launched to trace 22,000 patients who were treated by dentist Desmond D’Mello, who did not follow proper procedures over 32 years.

Desmond’s patients in Nottinghamshire now need to be tested for blood-borne viruses including HIV, Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C.

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D’Mello does not carry these viruses himself, but because he failed to follow clinical standards he may have infected his patients.

The dentist was suspended after he was secretly filmed breaching clinical standards, the NHS reported.

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‘It is easy to conflate our fears about visiting the dentist with these isolated incidents of poor practice’ said public health expert, Andrew Lee.

‘Most patients attending the dentist will probably have pretty low-risk procedures carried out on them, often with single-use instruments, so they would not be at risk,’ he added.

Professor Lee said that blood-borne viruses cannot survive outside the human body for long and called for calm during the patient recalls.