SYDNEY — Health authorities in New South Wales issued urgent warnings Tuesday to more than 2,400 patients of a Sydney dental clinic, advising them to seek testing for blood-borne viruses including HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C after investigators discovered serious breaches of infection control procedures at the practice. The warnings follow a months-long investigation by the NSW Health infectious diseases unit into Harborview Dental Clinic in the suburb of Randwick, which was shuttered by regulators in early April after inspectors uncovered evidence of repeated sterilization failures across multiple treatment rooms.
Officials said the clinic, which had operated for more than a decade serving a mixed patient population of adults and children, had failed to adequately sterilize dental instruments on dozens of documented occasions. Reusable tools including dental burs, scalers, extraction forceps and periodontal probes had not been processed through validated autoclave cycles, raising the possibility that blood-borne pathogens could have been transmitted between patients during routine procedures such as fillings, root canals, tooth extractions and scale-and-clean appointments. The breach period identified by investigators runs from at least January 2020 through the clinic’s closure in March 2026.
NSW Chief Health Officer Dr. Margaret Hollis said the risk to any individual patient remained low, but that the scale of the clinic’s patient list made notification and precautionary testing essential. “When infection control standards fail in a clinical environment, even a small probability of transmission must be taken seriously,” Dr. Hollis said in a statement released by the department. “We are urging every affected patient to contact their GP or a sexual health clinic to arrange a blood test as soon as possible. The earlier any infection is identified, the better the treatment outcomes.” She noted that modern testing for HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C was highly accurate and could be completed with a single blood draw.
The investigation was triggered in February after a staff member lodged a complaint with the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission alleging that sterilization logs had been falsified and that autoclave machines had recorded repeated cycle failures that went unaddressed by management. Health inspectors who subsequently visited the clinic found documentation irregularities dating to at least 2022 and removed sterilization equipment for forensic analysis. Clinic owner and principal dentist Dr. Raymond Tse has not been criminally charged but has been referred to the Dental Council of NSW, which has the authority to suspend or revoke his registration. A spokesperson for Tse’s legal team said he was cooperating with authorities and contested some of the allegations as procedural rather than substantive failures.
Infectious disease specialists noted that while the scenario was alarming, actual transmission rates in dental settings — even where sterilization lapses occur — tend to be significantly lower than in surgical environments because most dental procedures involve limited deep-tissue exposure. Professor Anita Cheung of the Westmead Institute of Medical Research said the statistical probability of any single patient having contracted HIV through the clinic was very small. “However, the emotional impact on patients who receive these letters cannot be understated, and testing is absolutely the right course of action,” she said. “HIV in particular is now highly treatable when caught early, and hepatitis C can be cured with a short course of antiviral medication lasting eight to twelve weeks in most cases.”
NSW Health said it had established a dedicated phone line, staffed from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week, and an online portal where patients could register their details and receive guidance on next steps. Free testing vouchers redeemable at pathology collection centers across greater Sydney were being made available to all individuals who received notification letters. Counseling and psychological support services were also being offered, given the potential distress associated with receiving a blood-borne virus notification from a healthcare provider.
The case has prompted renewed calls from dental professional bodies for mandatory real-time digital reporting of autoclave performance data to state health authorities, a measure that industry groups have previously resisted on grounds of administrative cost and privacy. The Australian Dental Association’s NSW branch said in a statement that the Randwick case was a serious outlier that did not reflect the standards maintained by the vast majority of Australian dental practitioners, while acknowledging that regulatory oversight of sterilization compliance needed to be strengthened. Regulators confirmed that a broader compliance audit of dental clinics across New South Wales would commence within 60 days.