Covid can be caught from DEAD BODIES for up to 17 days, scientists warn
- Japanese scientists found coronavirus in the nose and lungs of human cadavers
- The hamsters had traces of the virus post-mortem and spread it to living hamsters
- Evidence of infectious virus was found in corpses up to 17 days later
Covid could potentially spread from corpses to the living zombie-like, two new studies suggest.
Scientists in Japan found traces of coronavirus In nasal passages and lungs of cadavers of recently deceased humans and hamsters up to 17 days post-mortem.
They warned that while the risk of transmission from corpses to the general public is low – mostly confined to medical examiners, pathologists and healthcare workers – those people and grieving families should be cautious.
“It is possible that infectious viruses are transmitted through postmortem gases produced by the process of decomposition or other postmortem changes in the cadaver,” the authors of one of the studies wrote.
In to study In rodents, researchers infected a group of hamsters with the coronavirus and euthanized them 24 to 48 hours later.
Their bodies were then disinfected in an alcohol bath for 30 seconds and wrapped in wire mesh to prevent them from being cannibalized by hamsters living in the same cage.
They separated the hamsters into two groups. In one cage they put a wrapped body and two uninfected hamsters, and in the other cage they put together a live infected hamster and two uninfected hamsters.
Twenty-four hours later, they found high titers, or residual antibodies of infection, in the lungs and noses of the living hamsters.
Covid was transmitted by all living infected hamsters under both cohabitation conditions, while dead infected hamsters maintained high virus titers in their lungs and noses 24 hours after death.
A traditional Japanese burial method, in which cotton swabs are used to plug the nostrils, mouth, ears and rectum of the corpse, trapping gases that naturally escape when a person dies, has also proven effective in preventing transmission.
The custom, called Angel care, effectively prevented transmission from a dead hamster.
In the study involving humansJapanese scientists collected eight nasal swabs and 11 lung samples from 11 autopsy cases with Covid in 2021 and studied the genetic makeup of the virus strains.
A growing body of evidence shows that the coronavirus can remain in the body of the deceased for up to 17 days post-mortem, and can even transmit the virus to the living.
Hamsters were euthanized 24 or 48 hours after infection, disinfected, and co-housed with live hamsters. High titers of virus remained in the lungs and noses of dead hamsters 24 hours post-mortem
Their results showed that the virus was present in six of the 11 cases. Four of those 11 cases were discovered through nasal swabs, while nine of the 19 lung samples showed evidence of the virus up to 13 days after death.
“Therefore, appropriate infection control measures should be taken when handling cadavers,” they concluded.
Japan’s health ministry decided this week to reverse pandemic-era funeral restrictions that urged bereaved family members who were close contacts of the deceased to refrain from touching or viewing the bodies, or even to attend their funerals, depriving many families of the possibility of a final goodbye.
The ministry said the guidelines, which were set in July 2020, are expected to be lifted by the end of the year.
It is not the first time that scientists have discovered corpses capable of retaining traces of infectious diseases and potentially spreading them to others.
A 2021 study found that the infectious virus was still present in one of the COVID-19 corpses 17 days after death, despite already visible signs of decomposition.
Meanwhile, a 2020 study in Thailand reported that a person working on a corpse who died with Covid-19 in a forensic unit became infected shortly afterwards.
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