Regarding "A technical report from the Italian SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. Postmortem sampling and autopsy investigation in cases of suspected or probable COVID-19".

We have read with interest the paper by Alessandro Santurro et al. concerning a technical report from the Italian SARS-CoV-2 outbreak: Postmortem sampling and autopsy investigation in cases of suspected or probable COVID-19 [1]. The authors shared a standard operating procedure for correct swab collection, autopsy investigation and tissue sampling which is applicable to cases of COVID-19-related death, particularly in cases of death without medical intervention and in the absence of an ascertained SARS-CoV-2 infection and/or COVID-19 diagnosis. This method has important guiding value for forensic pathologists who have to perform postmortem investigations on COVID-19 cases. In addition, it also provides support for diagnostic activity in the present COVID-19 pandemic.

However, we think some of the author's expressions are unscientific in this paper. For example, the authors claim that SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 which resulted in a cluster of cases of pneumonia that originated in China around 31 December 2019. On February 19, 2020, the World Health Organization issued a statement that there is no evidence to prove the origin of the new coronavirus. In addition, previous studies have also shown that the origin of the new coronavirus may not be in Wuhan, China [2, 3]. To the best of our knowledge, there is still no evidence to prove the origin of COVID-19 at present. In the absence of evidence, it is unscientific and irresponsible to claim that COVID-19 originated in China. We think that COVID-19 outbreak in China first, but not necessarily originated in China. We hope that the authors can correct the expression of this article appropriately.