NYT: COVID-19 can be transmitted after host dies, ‘like in a zombie horror movie’
The coronavirus could spread even after the death of the host, the New York Times said.
“Like a zombie horror movie, the coronavirus can persist in the bodies of those infected even after death and spread further,” wrote columnist Apoorva Mandavilly.
The vast majority of those at risk are people who come into contact with cadavers because of their profession – pathologists, medical examiners and other healthcare workers, she said.
The author cited a researcher from Chiba University in Japan, Hisako Saito, who said it was a frequent problem in some countries that the bodies of those killed by COVID-19 were left alone or returned home.
“I think this is information that the majority of the population should have,” he said.
Along with his colleagues, wrote the Observer, Dr Saito found out that it was possible to contract the coronavirus from a body within 17 days of death. By taking samples from the nasal mucosa and lungs of 11 people who died from the coronavirus, Saito’s research team found the resistant virus in six samples 13 days later.
According to Mandavilli, in July 2020, the Japanese government urged the public to limit contact with the bodies of those killed by COVID-19 as much as possible and recommended that the body be cremated within 24 hours of death.
According to the columnist, contracting the virus from the dead is not unprecedented. Funeral traditions in African countries, for example, have provoked large outbreaks of Ebola. The risk of contracting Ebola from a dead body, she stressed, is much higher than that of the coronavirus, as Ebola penetrates virtually all tissues of the infected person.
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