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The first case of a dead body transmitting the coronavirus to a living person has been reported by scientists in Thailand, according to reports.

The case, described in a letter published Sunday in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, involved a forensic medical examiner in Bangkok who became infected with the bug, BuzzFeed first reported.

Won Sriwijitalai of Bangkok’s RVT Medical Center wrote along with Viroj Wiwanitkit of China’s Hainan Medical University that it’s unlikely the unidentified employee contracted the virus from a living person since there’s a limited community spread in Thailand.

“There is low chance of forensic medicine professionals coming into contact with infected patients, but they can have contact with biological samples and corpses,” they said.

It’s not clear how long the virus remains in a corpse, but the latest discovery suggests that precautions should be taken when handling bodies during a pandemic, the authors said.

“The disinfection procedure used in operation rooms might be applied in pathology/forensic units too,” wrote the authors.

“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.”

Thailand was one of the earliest countries to identify the new pathogen but has only reported around 2,600 cases.

Meanwhile, there have been nearly 2 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus worldwide, killing more than 124,000 people as of Tuesday afternoon, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.