Every day, Le Parisien mobilizes to answer your questions around the coronavirus. Today we are interested in the questioning of "Chateau", which asks us how long a person who has died from Covid-19 can remain contagious.
Contacted, the Directorate General of Health (DGS) is based on the opinions of the High Council of Public Health (HCSP). A first opinion, dated February 18, "relating to the care of the body of a deceased patient infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus", judges that it is necessary "to consider in principle that the risk of contamination is the even in a deceased patient than in the living patient ”.
A month later, on March 24, thanks to better knowledge of the virus, the HCSP became more precise and made its opinion of February 18 obsolete. “The risk of infection does not disappear immediately with the death of an infected patient; but the transmission routes are reduced, and in particular the respiratory tract, which constitutes the main mode of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 ”, we can read this time.
Virus detected five days after death
It is difficult to say precisely how long the organism of a deceased person can remain contagious. A priori not more than a few days, because a living person is himself almost no longer contagious three or four days after the symptoms have ended.
In March, samples taken during the autopsy of a patient in his sixties, five days after death, revealed the presence of the virus. "Even after five days between death and autopsy, it was still detectable, while RNA (NDLR: the acid released by the virus) is a molecule usually relatively fragile in post mortem. [But] the detection of the virus in post mortem does not necessarily mean that the virus is still active ", indicated to the Parisian Pr Lorin de la Grandmaison, head of the pathological anatomy and forensic medicine service at Raymond-Poincaré hospital of Garches. "To find out, it would be necessary to carry out virological analyzes of culture type on autopsy samples," he added.
PODCAST. Confined funeral: how funeral arrangements are organized
You can ask us all your questions about the coronavirus by filling out our form or directly at the address coronavirus@leparisien.fr. Find all the answers previously published on our dedicated page.