India, already experiencing an intense second wave of coronavirus, is now suffering from mucormycosis, a rare fungal infection known as “black fungus” that is spreading at an alarming rate, especially among COVID-19 convalescents.
Although the main focus of this rare fungal infection is still in India, cases of murcomycosis have been detected in other countries in recent weeks. Among the affected countries are Iraq – with five cases -, Uruguay and Mexico, where a first suspected patient was detected in the State of Mexico, according to local media this Thursday.
The 34-year-old man had fallen ill with COVID-19, but only presented mild symptoms of this disease, however days later he entered the General Hospital of Zone 71 in Chalco, State of Mexico, according to a report from the newspaper
The young man developed facial paralysis on May 29. “The otolaryngologist diagnosed him with murcomycosis, a black fungus,” Ángel Avendaño, the patient’s brother, told the newspaper.
Doctors from the 71st clinic of the IMSS told the family that, due to the rapid progression of the disease, they will have to remove the patient’s left eye. The infection can advance to the brain and the rest of your body in the coming days, putting your life at risk, Milenio said.
As of Monday, May 24, 19 regions of India had elevated mucormycosis, an sometimes fatal infection, to epidemic status.
“All public and private health centers will follow the directives to examine, diagnose and treat mucormycosis,” the government of the Jammu and Kashmir region in northern India reported in an order.
The Indian executive had already recommended that regional authorities declare the disease an epidemic at the beginning of the month in order to monitor the cases more closely.
According to the Indian press, the “black fungus” has already claimed hundreds of lives in a few days.
This is what we know about this condition:
Symptoms of the disease
According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the first symptoms are headaches, swelling of the face and fever, with a mortality rate of more than 54%.
Doctors treating COVID-19, diabetic, and immunosuppressed patients should watch for the first symptoms, such as sinus pain or nasal obstruction on one side of the face, headache on one side, swelling or numbness, toothache and tooth loosening, said the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR).
The disease can also lead to blackness or discoloration of the nose, blurred or double vision, chest pain, shortness of breath, and coughing up blood.
“This fungal infection mainly affects people who are taking drugs for other health problems that reduce their ability to fight environmental pathogens,” said the Indian National Task Force for COVID-19, warning that mucormycosis can be fatal if does not about.
“The sinuses or lungs of these individuals are affected after the fungal spores are inhaled from the air.”
Diabetes, a red light
“It is not something that everyone can contract,” said infectious disease specialist Atul Patel in an interview with EFE.
“A determining factor that is also helping to increase the incidence is the use of steroids for the treatment of COVID-19 infection,” he added.
Mucormycosis is strongly related to diabetes. And diabetes, in turn, can be exacerbated by steroids like dexamethasone, which is used to treat severe COVID-19.
The rapid spread of this infection is attributed to the uncontrolled use of steroids to treat coronavirus patients, according to experts such as Professor K. Srinath Reddy of the Public Health Foundation of India.
“People have been using them excessively and inappropriately,” the professor told AFP, explaining that contaminated water in oxygen cylinders or humidifiers also gives the fungus a chance to enter the body.
Likewise, people who have recently received an organ transplant or who have been in the ICU for a long time may also be more susceptible to contracting this infection.
“Cases have been reported in several other countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Austria, Brazil and Mexico, but the volume is much higher in India,” said David Denning, a professor at the University of Manchester and an expert on the Organization. charity of the Global Action Fund for Fungal Infections (GAFFI).
“And one of the reasons is a lot, a lot of diabetes, and a lot of poorly controlled diabetes.”
Arunaloke Chakrabarti, director of the Center for Advanced Research in Medical Mycology in Chandigarh and an advisor to GAFFI, said that even before COVID-19, mucormycosis was more common in India than in most countries, “in part due to the millions who have diabetes ”.
India, a country in health crisis
The second most populous country in the world on Wednesday surpassed the barrier of 27 million infections by COVID-19 since the virus began to be detected in the country, on a day in which the number of deaths once again rose above the 4,000 daily and the positives experienced a slight rise.
The number of cases grew to 208,921 after yesterday they fell below the 200,000 threshold for the first time in 41 days, raising the total since the start of the pandemic to 27 million, data that only the United States exceeds, with just over 33 million, according to the Indian Ministry of Health.
The downward trend of the positives contrasts with the mortality rate, which added 4,157 new deaths after yesterday the data fell almost a thousand and whose total rises to 311,388, remaining as the third most affected nation, only behind United States and Brazil.
Experts have long warned that the actual number of cases and deaths could be vastly higher.
The Indian health authorities raised the alarm a couple of weeks ago, when a significant increase in cases was detected among coronavirus patients with very specific pathologies such as diabetes.
“Mucormycosis is not a communicable disease, unlike coronavirus,” Dr. Randeep Singh Guleria, the director of the AIIMS public hospital in New Delhi, said at an Indian Health Ministry news conference on Monday.
According to Guleria, “90 or 95% of patients infected with mucormycosis are diabetic or take steroids. This infection has hardly been detected among those who are neither diabetic nor take steroids.”
The main pulmonologist of Jammu and Kashmir, Naveed Nazir Shah, reminded Efe that it is not a new disease and for the moment it has only caused one death in the region, a person in his 40s who had recovered from the coronavirus.
Indian Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Monday that the country has detected some 5,500 cases of mucormycosis, especially in the western states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, and that of all patients, 55% had diabetes and 4,556 had a history of previous coronavirus.
However, the Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Sadanand Gowda, said last weekend that the total figure amounts to more than 8,800 infections.
Medical experts stressed that they have found an increase in cases in India in recent weeks, while the Ministry of Health issued a circular on Sunday on how to treat the fungal infection.
“Cases of mucormycosis infections in post-recovery COVID-19 patients are almost four to five times more numerous than those detected before the pandemic,” Ahmedabad-based infectious disease specialist Atul Patel told AFP. of the state COVID-19 task force.
P Suresh, chief of ophthalmology at Fortis Hospital in Mulund, Mumbai, told Reuters that his facility had treated at least 10 of these patients in the last two weeks, double the number in the entire year before the pandemic.
All were infected with COVID-19 and most were diabetic or had received immunosuppressive medications. Some had died and others had lost their sight, he said. Other doctors spoke of a similar increase in cases.
“Before, I saw one patient a year, now I see one a week,” said Nishant Kumar, a consultant ophthalmologist at Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai. The doctor pointed out the potential for contamination from oxygen pipes and humidifiers in hospitals.
Ahmedabad ordered public hospitals to set up separate treatment rooms for patients infected with the “black fungus” as cases increase. People with severe disease may require specific antifungal therapy and several operations.
With information from AFP, EFE and Reuters
