Fig. 1: Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in deceased individuals with COVID-19 in anatomically distinctly mapped oro- and nasopharyngeal as well as CNS regions.

a, Cartoon depicting the anatomical structures sampled for histomorphological, ultrastructural and molecular analyses including SARS-CoV-2 RNA measurement from fresh (non-formalin-fixed) specimens of deceased individuals with COVID-19. Specimens were taken from the olfactory mucosa underneath the cribriform plate (anatomical region R1, blue, n = 30), the olfactory bulb (R2, yellow, n = 31), the olfactory tubercle (R3, n = 7), different branches of the trigeminal nerve (including conjunctiva (n = 16) and cornea (n = 13)), mucosa covering the uvula (R4, n = 22), the respective trigeminal ganglion (R5, orange, n = 22), the cranial nerve nuclei in the medulla oblongata (R6, dark blue, n = 31), the cerebellum (R7, n = 24) and the carotid artery wall (n = 13). b–d, Quantitative data for each individual shown on a logarithmic scale normalized on 10,000 cells. e, Correlation of disease duration and viral RNA load in the CNS (typically measured in the olfactory bulb or medulla oblongata). The length of disease duration correlates inversely with the amount of detectable SARS-CoV-2 RNA (correlation coefficient r = −0.5, **P = 0.006 from n = 29 individuals). Females are represented by triangles and males are represented by circles; no data for P27 is shown because no viral testing could be performed on naive or cryopreserved tissue of P27.