Dying of VOC-202012/01 — multimodal investigations in a death case of the SARS-CoV-2 variant

Heinrich, Fabian; Romich, Carina; Zimmermann, Tamara; Kniep, Inga; Fitzek, Antonia; Steurer, Stefan; Glatzel, Markus; Nörz, Dominik; Günther, Thomas; Czech-Sioli, Manja; Fischer, Nicole; Grundhoff, Adam; Lütgehetmann, Marc; Ondruschka, Benjamin

The current pandemic with Severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 has been taking on new dynamics since the emergence of new variants last fall, some of them spreading more rapidly. Many countries currently find themselves in a race to ramp up vaccination strategies that have been initiated and a possible third wave of the pandemic from new variants, such as the Variant of Concern-202012/01 from the B.1.1.7 lineage. Until today, many investigations in death cases of Coronavirus-disease-19 have been conducted, revealing pulmonary damage to be the predominant feature of the disease. Thereby, different degrees of macroscopic and microscopic lung damage have been reported, most of them resembling an Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. Far more, systemic complications of the disease such as pulmonary embolisms have been described. However, neither morphologic nor virologic findings of patients dying of the new variants have yet been reported. Here, we report on a comprehensive analysis of radiologic, morphologic, and virologic findings in a fatal case of this variant.