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

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          Abstract

          Dear Editor, COVID-19 is a new and emerging disease and its origin is in the Republic of China. 1 In 2020, the disease spread rapidly worldwide resulting in it being classified as a pandemic. 2 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 3 ). 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 None. Declaration of competing interest None229E replication.

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          Emerging new coronavirus infection in Wuhan, China:Situation in early 2020

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            Food for Thought: The Role of Undernutrition and Diabetes in India’s TB Epidemic

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              COVID-19 in medical personnel: observation from Thailand

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                J Forensic Leg Med
                J Forensic Leg Med
                Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine
                Elsevier Ltd and Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine.
                1752-928X
                1878-7487
                11 April 2020
                11 April 2020
                : 101964
                Affiliations
                [1]RVT Medical Center, Bangkok, Thailand
                [2]Dr DY Patil University, Pune, India
                [3]Hainan Medical University, Haikou, China
                Author notes
                []Corresponding author. RVT Medical Center, Bangkok, Thailand. wonsriwi@ 123456gmail.com
                Article
                S1752-928X(20)30071-8 101964
                10.1016/j.jflm.2020.101964
                7151265
                32452454
                fe97a472-a20c-4307-8237-981623ad0c58
                © 2020 Elsevier Ltd and Faculty of Forensic and Legal Medicine. All rights reserved.

                Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

                History
                : 6 April 2020
                : 8 April 2020
                : 9 April 2020
                Categories
                Article

                covid-19,forensic medicine,personnel,observation
                covid-19, forensic medicine, personnel, observation

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