Abstract
The infectivity of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in deceased persons and organisms remains unclear. We studied transgenic K18 hACE2 mice to determine the kinetics of virus infectivity after host death. Five days after death, virus infectivity in the lung declined by >96% and RNA copies declined by 48.2%.
Highlights
The safe handling and disposal of bodies of persons who have died of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is vital for infection control
B) Viral RNA measured by copies of N gene detected by reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR)
By day 5, levels of infectious virus had fallen by 96.5%, whereas viral RNA remained at 48.2% compared with day 0 (Figure, panels C, D)
Summary
The safe handling and disposal of bodies of persons who have died of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is vital for infection control. RNA detection by RT-PCR might not directly correlate with virus infectivity or duration of symptomatic disease. Transgenic K18-hACE2 mice provide a surrogate model to study the kinetics of SARS-CoV-2 viral replication during infection [8] and after host death. We investigated the temporal decay of infectious SARSCoV-2 in postmortem tissues of infected K18-hACE2 mice.
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