No autopsy needed for Covid-19 deaths under medical care

No autopsy needed for Covid-19 deaths under medical care

 - The Times Of India

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi:  20.05.2020

The Indian Council of Medical Research has issued guidelines clarifying what exactly needs to be done in terms of treating coronavirus deaths as a medico-legal case or not.

The “Standard Guidelines for Medico-Legal autopsy”, issued by the ICMR on Tuesday said, “The deaths in hospital and under medical care due to Covid-19 is a Non-MLC case and does not require postmortem examination and the required certification of death is being done by the treating doctors”.

The apex medical research body of the country said that some of the cases of suspected Covid-19 cases which are brought dead to the hospital, labelled by emergency doctors as MLC and where the body is sent to the mortuary and police informed, may need postmortem examination.

Some of the cases are suicide, homicide or accident and maybe Covid-19 positive or suspected case of Covid-19. In such cases after the inquest procedure, if any crime is not suspected, police have the authority (according to section 174 of the CrPC) to waive off conduction of medico-legal autopsy, even though labelled as medicolegal case.”

The ICMR however said “This provision needs to be used prudently based on police officer’s investigation findings and forensic doctor’s advice. Asymptomatic infected persons, patients in incubation period, unidentified dead bodies and cases with negative result may not meet the diagnostic criteria for suspected cases, but should be treated as suspected Covid-19 death cases as false negative result is not uncommon.” According to ICMR, in case of a large number of deaths, both incineration and burial are recommended methods for safe disposal of the bodies.