ABOVE: People wait in line for COVID-19 testing in Guwahati, India, in July 2020.
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Physicians in India are documenting an alarming number of cases of mucormycosis, an often-deadly fungal infection, among patients with COVID-19 and those who have recently recovered. Many of these patients had diabetes and were treated with steroids for their coronavirus infection, a combination that might have made them more prone to the mold attacking their tissues, The New York Times reports.
“You are using steroids to reduce the hyperimmune response, which is there in Covid,” K. Srinath Reddy, who heads the Public Health Foundation of India, tells the Times. “But you are reducing the resistance to other infections.”
The fungus, present in the soil and air, infects the respiratory tract, brain, and sinuses, sometimes causing a bloody nose, swelling in the eye, and loss of vision, among other maladies.
Although the disease is ...
