The body of a Ukrainian man who died from drowning in Italy tested positive for Covid-19 as many as 28 times in the six weeks after his death.
Over a period of 41 days, 28 tests were carried out on the corpse, and they all turned out to be positive. The man’s body was kept at 4C in the morgue at Chieti Hospital inside a sealed waterproof bag.
The present case shows the persistency of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 viral genome in nasopharyngeal swabs performed on a drowned Caucasian man, aged 41 years old, who was completely asymptomatic when he was alive, up to 41 days after death. Specific real-time reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (TaqMan 2019-nCoV Assay Kit v2; Thermo Fisher Scientific, Italy and Realquality RQ-SARS-CoV-2, AB Analytical) was used to evaluate the swabs.
