Autopsies provide crucial information for fighting COVID-19
A mortuary at Dover Air Force Base (William M. Plate Jr./)Follow all of PopSci’s COVID-19 coverage here, including tips on cleaning groceries, ways to tell if your symptoms are just allergies, and a tutorial on making your own mask.In the fight against disease, the dead are rarely thought of as an active part of war. But especially when it comes to an emerging virus like SARS-CoV-2, decedents are a crucial part of figuring out what exactly is going on inside infected people’s bodies. And that’s made autopsies a crucial tool in studying COVID-19.“Autopsy is an important way to gain knowledge about how a disease is affecting our body, how it’s interacting with preexisting conditions, and how it’s playing out in different people,” says Alex Williamson, the chief of autopsy pathology for New York healthcare provider Northwell Health and a member of the College of American Pathologists’ autopsy committee. Living patients...