Economics
Covid Has Killed 5 Million People, But Only Hundreds Have Been Autopsied
To get a clearer picture of the virus’s aftermath, pathologists are pushing to resurrect a dying practice.
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In an air-locked chamber in the world’s largest research hospital, Daniel Chertow and a half-dozen doctors and scientists clad in astronaut-inspired protective gear are carrying out a microscopic search inside a 26-year-old man.
The patient went to the hospital with chest pain in spring 2020. He didn’t have typical Covid-19 symptoms, but Chertow wants to study him as part of a broader mission to understand where in the body the coronavirus goes and what it does in each of those places. If you’re a Covid case in Chertow’s emerging pathogens lab, you’re not there for treatment; you’re the subject of an autopsy.