Coronavirus (COVID-19) Collection
Post-mortem examination of Hospital Inpatient COVID-19 Deaths in Lusaka, Zambia - A Descriptive Whole-body Autopsy Series
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has caused 171,292,827 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 3,687,589 deaths globally as of June 4th, 2021. Of these 3,530,845 cases occurred in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) with 131,630 deaths (WHO Coronavirus dashboard, 2021; Africa CDC - Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), 2021). Zambia reported its first COVID-19 case in March 2020 and has since recorded 96, 563 cases with 1,284 deaths as of June 4th, 202 (World Health Organisation, 2021). Eighteen months after the first COVID-19 cases were reported from Wuhan, China, several major knowledge gaps on COVID-19 pathology and pathogenesis remain, particularly in SSA.COVID-19: Autopsy findings in six patients between 26 and 46 years of age
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused more than two million deaths worldwide, mainly due to severe respiratory and vascular symptoms (Berlin et al., 2020; WHO report, 2020). Most studies have focused on middle-aged and older adults, who are particularly endangered by the virus and are more likely to suffer from serious, life-threatening courses of disease (Guan et al., 2020; Morley and Vellas, 2020). However, younger patients with no or very few pre-existing health conditions may be critically affected by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections, accompanied by serious health conditions and potentially fatal outcomes.First case of postmortem study in a patient vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2
We report on an 86-year-old male resident of a retirement home who received vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. Past medical history included systemic arterial hypertension, chronic venous insufficiency, dementia and prostate carcinoma. On January 9, 2021, the man received lipid nanoparticle-formulated, nucleoside-modified RNA vaccine BNT162b2 in a 30 μg dose. On that day and in the following 2 weeks, he presented with no clinical symptoms (Table 1). On day 18, he was admitted to hospital for worsening diarrhea.How long can SARS-CoV-2 persist in human corpses?
How long can SARS-CoV-2 persist in a body? This is question everyone asks but that cannot yet be answered. Many articles have reported the presence of the virus in infected people for more than 5 months (Zapor, 2020), but it is not clear how long SARS-CoV-2 can persist in a human body. The finding of SARS-CoV-2 genomic fragments in tissues of infected people does not say whether the virus is alive and can infect others or whether these are simple fragments of the viral genome, which do not constitute a threat to humans.The COVID-19 pandemic: Pathologists support the clinical infectious diseases team
The pathologist is involved in many diagnostic steps together with the clinical infectious disease team in the management of COVID-19-affected patients. In particular, cytological and histopathological procedures as well as autoptic findings may represent useful tools to better understand the pathobiology of the disease as well as to correctly define causes of death. Moreover, pathologists have been forced to reconsider the usual laboratory workflow and introduce adequate guidelines against virus diffusion in the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring high biosafety levels.
