AIIMS doctors to research how long coronavirus can survive in dead bodies
The doctors of All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) are contemplating an autopsy of a COVID-19 victim to find out how long the coronavirus can survive in a corpse and if it can transmit the disease, the Delhi hospital's forensic chief said.
The study will help to find out how the virus affects the organs, Dr. Sudhir Gupta said. Consent will be obtained from the legal heirs of the deceased for the same, he said. Adding, he said that many more departments like pathology and microbiology would be involved in the study.
Dr. Gupta said that it is going to be a first-of-its-kind and thus has to be planned meticulously. As per the report, it will help understand how the virus behaves in the body and the way it affects the organs. Also, it will help us assess how long nCov can survive in a dead body.
On Tuesday, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) stated that COVID-19 is a respiratory infection and mainly spread through aerosols. As per the available scientific data till now, the survival of the virus decreases with time in a dead body but there is no specific time limit to declare the body non-infective.
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The ICMR said that limited studies had been conducted on the post-mortem samples of patients who died due to coronavirus. Reportedly, most of the pathological studies are in consensus with the clinical features and clinical course of the disease in general. However, the disease also gives pathological damages to organs like heart, liver, kidney, brain, blood vessels and other organs, it said.
-PTC News
