According to reports, scientists in Thailand revealed they identified the first case of a person dying from coronavirus after catching the virus from a dead body.
The case was revealed in a letter published by the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine this past Saturday, and said the incident was “the first report on COVID-19 infection and death among medical personnel in a Forensic Medicine unit." The authors of the letter said the person who passed from the virus was a “forensic practitioner” in Thailand, and gave more insight into how the practitioner got the virus. The authors said, “There is a low chance of forensic medicine professionals coming into contact with infected patients, but they can have contact with biological samples and corpses.”
This comes after the World Health Organization noted in their guidelines that “most agents do not survive long in the human body after death.” However, Public Health England has advised their staff against working with bodies of coronavirus patients, noting there is a risk. Public Health England issued a statement, saying “Those handling bodies should be aware that there is likely to be a continuing risk of infection from the body fluids and tissues of cases where coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) infection is identified.”
source: Buzzfeed
