The registry is coordinated by the Heidelberg site of the German Centre for Infectious Diseases (DZIF). The DZIF tissue bank is part of the BioMaterialBank Heidelberg (BMBH) and a partner in the German Biobank Alliance (GBA). More than 3,000 tissue samples from COVID patients are already stored in the tissue bank. Since March 2020, standardised autopsies of COVID-19-related deaths have been carried out regularly at the Institute of Pathology at Heidelberg University Hospital. Both formalin-fixed and cryopreserved tissue samples from the heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, kidneys, liver, spleen, tonsils and thymus are stored in the tissue bank.