Sayaka Nagasawa, Yuichiro Hirata, Sho Miyamoto, Seiya Ozono, Shun Iida, Harutaka Katano, Shigeki Tsuneya, Kei Kira, Susumu Kobayashi, Makoto Nakajima, Hiroyuki Abe, Masako Ikemura, Isao Yamamoto, Kimiko Nakagawa, Kazumi Kubota, Shinji Akitomi, Iwao Hasegawa, Tetsuo Ushiku, Tadaki Suzuki, Hirotaro Iwase, Yohsuke Makino, Hisako Saitoh
High viral titers of infectious severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have been detected in human corpses long after death. However, little is known about the kinetics of infectious SARS-CoV-2 in corpses. In this case series study, we investigated the postmortem kinetics of infectious SARS-CoV-2 in human corpses by collecting nasopharyngeal swab samples at multiple time points from six SARS-CoV-2-infected patients after their death. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected by quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction from nasopharyngeal swab samples collected from all six deceased patients...
2024: PloS One