Letters: Why coronavirus is so hard to investigate

Corona mysteries

Sir: John Lee highlights the issue of dying of seasonal flu vs dying of coronavirus when assessing attributable deaths (‘The corona puzzle’, 28 March). The obvious solution would be a high autopsy rate. However, autopsies on known or suspected coronavirus deaths are not being done in case they lead to mortuary technologists and pathologists becoming infected. (Tuberculosis, HIV and even rabies infections are easier to prevent in mortuary work than coronavirus.)

This contributes to a lack of information about how coronavirus affects people. In the long term, it also seems unlikely that anatomical examination of the dead will revert to its pre-coronavirus autopsy rate of 17 per cent of all deaths (in England and Wales). So modern medicine will be even less well-informed on precisely why people die in hospitals and the community.
Professor Sebastian Lucas
Department of Cellular Pathology
St Thomas’ Hospital, London