Bizarre Covid discovery WEEKS after man's death
A man has tested positive for coronavirus 28 times, more than a month after he drowned.
The man, 41, from Ukraine, died while swimming at sea with friends with his body found wedged between rocks, according to the case in Journal of Medicine Case reports.
Researchers from D’Annunzio University in Italy wrote the man was asymptomatic before he died.
A post-mortem nasopharyngeal swab was taken before the autopsy which contained SARS-CoV-2. The man’s body was kept at 4 degrees Celsius in the morgue at Chieti Hospital inside a sealed waterproof bag.
Doctors performed a total of 28 tests on the corpse. Each one involved a nasal swab of both nostrils.
This was done for 41 days after he died. It was noted he had to be buried after 41 days as the body was beginning to decay.
“All swabs performed during the observational period were reported as positive,” researchers wrote.
Researchers wrote there has been limited information on Covid-19’s ability to survive in dead bodies and the risk of it being contagious to cadavers.
“Data about its persistence are of fundamental importance for pathologists to understand when the handling of the corpse is safe, and further studies are needed to estimate the virus contagiousness,” they wrote.
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Insight into how Covid can survive outside of living hosts
Researchers hoped the case shedded more light on how the virus can survive outside of living hosts. They cited examples showing Covid-19 existing in cruise ship cabins 17 days after passengers departed the vessel.
Other examples included it surviving on steel and plastic for hours.
Doctors believe more studies are necessary to determine post-mortem survival and transmissibility of Covid-19 in the dead.
They also noted the study shows the importance of post-mortem swabs in all autopsy cases given that being asymptomatic does not mean someone does not have coronavirus.
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