As elective operations are being cancelled, and surgeons are called upon to perform only emergency or carcinological surgery, the precautions to take when operating on patients who are potentially or proven COVID-19 positive are of utmost importance. The novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak hit China in the beginning of December 2019, and ignited the headlines a few days later. Unexpected, unprecedented, and radical modifications have profoundly shaken the world since then. The economic shutdown in China cleared the map of China viewed from the sky, the halt in travel, counseled first within the country, then internationally, was too late to stop the diffusion outside of China, and meanwhile has destroyed enterprises such as Flybe, while changing the economy of airlines and airports the world over. Hospitals and medical structures, in China, then Korea, and now Italy and France, abound with people either infected, or afraid of being so. The stock of respiratory machines has never been used so prominently, while facial masks, visors of all sorts and handkerchiefs, wipes and tissues have never been expended more often, and are even depleted in certain regions. 

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