COVID-19 in forensic medicine unit personnel: Observation from Thailand.

Dear Editor,

COVID-19 is a new and emerging disease and its origin is in the Republic of China. In 2020, the disease spread rapidly worldwide resulting in it being classified as a pandemic. This new disease is a new challenge for the medical community since during the COVID-19 outbreak, medical personnel might get infected. Within Forensic Medicine Units, there has been no reported case of personnel suffering from the disease.

Here, the authors would like to share their observations from Thailand, the second county affected in the timelines of COVID-19 outbreak. At present (20th March 2020), the accumulated number of COVID-19 in Thailand is 272. Of this, one of the cases is a forensic practitioner working in Bangkok, capital of Thailand. Indeed, there are only 2 COVID-19 patients who are medical personnel (the forensic medicine professional and a nurse assistant). Although patients may get the infection from workplace exposure or through spreading in the community, at the period of the occurrence of this case, the patients in Thailand are mostly imported cases and recording of local spreading in the community is limited. There is low chance of forensic medicine professionals coming into contact with infected patients, but they can have contact with biological samples and corpses. At present, there is no data on the exact number of COVID-19 contaminated corpses since it is not a routine practice to examine for COVID-19 in dead bodies in Thailand. Nevertheless, infection control and universal precautions are necessary. Forensic professionals have to wear protective devices including a protective suit, gloves, goggles, cap and mask. The disinfection procedure used in operation rooms might be applied in pathology/forensic units too. According to our best knowledge, this is the first report on COVID-19 infection and death among medical personnel in a Forensic Medicine unit.

Funding

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Declaration of competing interest

None229E replication.