Japanese scientists find covid virus in corpses up to 17 days after death

Covid could potentially spread from corpses to the living as if it were a zombie, as suggested by two new studies. Scientists in Japan found traces of the coronavirus in the nostrils and lungs of human cadavers and recently deceased hamsters up to 17 days after autopsy.

They cautioned that while the risk of transmission from dead bodies to the general public is low, mostly limited to coroners, pathologists and healthcare workers, those bereaved individuals and families should be careful.

“It is possible that infectious viruses are transmitted through postmortem gases produced by the decomposition process or other postmortem changes in the corpse”, wrote the authors of one of the studies. In a study on rodents, researchers infected a group of hamsters with the coronavirus and euthanized them 24 to 48 hours later.

Then their bodies were disinfected in an alcohol bath for 30 seconds and wrapped in wire netting to prevent them from being cannibalized by live hamsters in the same cage. They separated the rodents into two groups. In one cage, they put a wrapped carcass and two uninfected hamsters, and in the other cage, they put a live infected mouse and two uninfected hamsters together. Twenty-four hours later, they found high titers, or residual antibodies to the infection, in the lungs and noses of the living hamsters.

Covid was transmitted from all living infected hamsters in both shared housing conditions, while dead infected hamsters maintained high virus titers in their lungs and noses 24 hours after autopsy.

It was also discovered that a Japanese traditional burial methodin which cotton pads are used to plug the cadaver’s nostrils, mouth, ears, and rectum, trapping gases that naturally escape when a person dies, prevents transmission.

The custom, called angel care, effectively prevented transmission from a dead hamster. In the study involving humans, Japanese scientists collected eight nasal swabs and 11 lung samples from 11 autopsy cases with Covid in 2021 and investigated the genetic makeup of the viral strains.

Their results showed that the virus was present in six of the 11 cases. Four of those 11 cases were found through nasal swabs, while nine of 19 lung samples showed evidence of the virus up to 13 days after death.

“Therefore, appropriate infection control measures should be taken when handling carcasses,” they concluded.

Japan’s Health Ministry decided this week to roll back 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 attending their funerals, depriving to many families the opportunity for a last goodbye. (YO)