Bengaluru: The deadly coronavirus remains active in the body of the victim even 18 hours after death, a Bengaluru doctor has claimed.
According to a report in The Hindu, Dr Dinesh Rao, head of Department of Forensic Medicine in Oxford Medical College and Research Institute, conducted an autopsy on a COVID-19 victim and found that the virus was active in some parts of the body 18 hours after death.
Dr Rao found the virus in the mouth, throat and nose of the victim. He also discovered that the victim’s lungs were ‘as hard as a leather ball’.
“I took up the autopsy to understand the disease process and its outcome, and to study if there is a need to modify the treatment protocols. Of the various swabs I took, those from the mouth, throat and nose tested RT-PCR positive, while there was no trace of the virus on the skin of the face, neck, or internal organs like the respiratory passage and lungs. That is because the lung surface was dominated by bacterial infections,” Dr Dinesh Rao was quoted as saying.
It took an hour and 10 minutes for the autopsy to be done on the 62-year-old COVID-19 victim, and Dr Rao had to do it alone as no one was willing to join him.
Dr Rao was shocked to see what the virus had done to the lungs of the victim. Reportedly, the virus had caused blot clots in the air sacs and ruptured most of them.
“These findings indicate that artificial ventilation or oxygen administration would not have helped the patient. The patient required thrombolytic therapies that involve dissolving the clots in the body first. The air sacs were filled with clots and that had to be dissolved first,” said the doctor.
Earlier, PDU Government Medical College (GMC) in Rajkot had carried out five autopsies on COVID-19 victims. The doctors found that the lungs of the victims had become as “hard as a stone.”
