AIIMS Bhopal Study Tests if Dead COVID Patients Can Spread Virus

A recent study conducted by a team of medical experts from AIIMS, Bhopal assessed whether patients who died of COVID-19 remain infectious after their death. The results are expected to be out next week.

“We’ve taken the bold step of study via autopsies of the dead COVID-19 patients. We came through various reports of undignified burial and cremation of the COVID-19 patients. The entire world has gone paranoid with COVID-19 and even the kin of the COVID-19 patients are running away from the bodies of such patients after death,” said AIIMS-Bhopal Director Professor Sarman Singh, according to a New Indian Express report.

"I posted on Facebook the challenge to the pathology and forensic experts at AIIMS-Bhopal to study COVID-19 patients' bodies to find out whether the fatal infection really spreads from dead bodies or not,” Dr Singh said on Thursday, 24 September.

Professor Singh added that the initial findings of the study indicate no existence or proliferation of the virus on the body’s surface, which is in line with the scientific point of view.

“The primary findings of the histopathology and other analysis suggest that the vascular system is the worst hit by the virus. It consequently causes coagulation and leakage in blood vessels, which resultantly trigger thrombosis, finally causing the patient’s death. It’s also been seen that some patients who were already treated for COVID-19 died later due to lodging of thrombosis.”

Dr Sarman Singh, Director, AIIMS-Bhopal

So far, there is no evidence of the infection spreading from dead bodies to healthy people. There have been situations where people who attended funerals of COVID-19 patients reported testing positive for the infection later, there’s no proof of this transmitting from the deceased person, Dr SIngh added.

“As a microbiologist, logically I don’t believe that the Covid-19 infection can be caused by a dead body. But still, I felt a detailed study was needed to find out and validate the truth.”

Dr Sarman Singh, Director, AIIMS Bhopal

While bacteria can grow and proliferate on a dead body through the body’s flesh and blood, it is unlikely for a virus to multiply inside the body once the process of cell division has stopped following the death.

A team of microbiologists, forensic medicine experts, and pathologists then designed a research to test the hypothesis and conduct autopsies.

“Till now autopsies of 15 bodies have been conducted within a duration ranging between six to 12 hours of the death. In this study, we’re trying to find out those organs/parts of the body in which the deadly virus has been present even after the patient’s death.”

Researchers

The research will examine the viral load for each patient. This will be done once while they are still living, and once after their death. The data collected on the two occasions will then be compared.

“We’re also trying to ascertain histopathologically to ascertain how the COVID-19 virus affects the various organs and parts of the body, including lungs, liver, pancreas, heart, intestines, and brain. The detailed results of this first of its kind study on dead COVID-19 patients in India will hopefully be out next week,” said Dr Singh.

(With inputs from The New Indian Express)