News Analysis India

Tag: white fungus

  • 59-year-old Ghaziabad man with yellow, black and white fungus dies

    By PTI
    GHAZIABAD: A 59-year-old COVID-19 patient, who was also detected with black, white and yellow fungus, has passed away here, the doctor treating him said on Saturday.

    “Kunwar Singh was under treatment but passed away due to toxemia (blood poisoning by toxins) at 7.30 pm on Friday,” Dr. B P Tyagi, an ENT (ear, nose, throat) specialist at Harsh Hospital in the city’s Raj Nagar area, told PTI.

    The doctor said Singh, a lawyer from Sanjay Nagar in the city, had approached him recently with Covid conditions.

    “The yellow fungus, besides white and black fungus, was detected during endoscopy on May 24,” Tyagi added.

    Meanwhile, he said his hospital is treating another 59-year-old man from Muradnagar who has also been detected with yellow fungus infections.

    “The fungus in Rajesh Kumar, a resident of Muradnagar, was detected near his brain. Half of his jaw has been removed,” he said.

    He too has toxemia but the level of infection is lesser than what Kunwar Singh had, the doctor said, adding the patient is on anti-fungal medication.

    Ghaziabad, adjoining Delhi, in western Uttar Pradesh has recorded 432 deaths linked to Covid-19 so far and 1,957 active cases of coronavirus, according to official figures updated till Friday.

  • Don’t panic by colour of fungus, look for causes, risks: Experts advise as mucormycosis cases rise

    By PTI
    NEW DELHI: Amid rising mucormycosis cases among Covid patients and those who have recovered from it, epidemiologists Tuesday advised people to not get panicked by the colour of the fungus causing it, and underlined the importance of analysing the kind of infection, its causes and associated risk-factors.

    Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had said on Monday that 18 states have reported 5,424 cases of mucormycosis, a life-threatening infection, prevalent among COVID-19 patients and those who recovered from the viral disease.

    Beside Black Fungus cases, White and Yellow fungus infections too were reported from different parts of the country recently, which scientists say are also mucormycosis.

    Dr Samiran Panda, the Head of Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), said the use of “terms like black, green or yellow fungus” is making people scared and apprehensive.

    Also, black fungus getting synonymous with existing mucormycosis is complicating things, he said.

    “For common people,” he told PTI, “I will say not to be driven by panic by colour — black, yellow, white.

    Let us find what kind of fungal infection is the person infected with as most fungal infections that cause fatal or severe disease are invasive fungal infection so that can occur when there is reduction or compromise in immunity.

    ALSO READ | Black fungus: Mucormycosis affects oral cavity, here are precautions you can take

    “So basic underlying phenomenon is immunity or the ability to fight the fungal infection,” he said.

    In Ghaziabad, a person was detected with three variants of the fungus — Black, White and Yellow — on May 24, claimed a doctor of a private hospital who is treating the 59-year-old patient in the NCR city in Uttar Pradesh.

    Yellow Fungus has been observed in reptiles, such as lizards, but not in human beings, claimed Dr B P Tyagi, an ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat) specialist at Harsh Hospital in city’s Raj Nagar area.

    “The patient had come to me with conditions of extreme weakness, giddiness, fever and nasal discharge. The Yellow Fungus was detected during the endoscopy,” the doctor told PTI.

    “This is the first case of a person having three variants of the fungus — Black, White and Yellow,” he claimed.

    He said the patient, a lawyer by profession, had COVID-19 but was in home isolation and approached the hospital after enduring these problems for eight to 10 days.

    “He is under treatment now. There is nothing to worry and the fungus would be removed. Had he come to me after one or two days’ only, his problem would have been resolved by now,” Tyagi said.

    He said fungi attack people with compromised immunity and in this particular case, his patient is a diabetic.

    Asked about the Yellow Fungus case, ICMR’s Dr Panda said the specimen has to be studied to ensure it indeed was yellow fungus which is seen in reptiles.

    Professor Dr. Giridhara R Babu, the head of Life-course Epidemiology, Indian Institute of Public Health, said it is important to identify the cause and risk-factors associated with fungal infections.

    “When a disease such as mucormycosis exists in a community, what kind of investigations are we doing? As an epidemiologist, I am interested in identifying the particular cause of it, then what is the set of causes that will result in a condition like this, the reason it was not seen in the first wave and it has been seen in the second wave only,” he said.

    Babu also said it needs to be understood why some people are more prone to the fungal infection and what is the reason behind rising cases.

    “In the second wave, there are some unusual things happening which were not there in the first wave such as the use of industrial oxygen. There are also variants of coronavirus in the second wave,” he said.

    He said viral and fungal infections are always around, but most people don’t get impacted because of their good immunity or less infective nature of the virus or the fungus.

    “But if that changes,and they become more infective or our immunity reduces then we are at a higher risk. What I will definitely call for is one can buy tons of antifungal agents, but if you don’t find what is the cause and risk-factors leading to this, then we will not be able to solve it. I think that is where we should focus as a country,” he said.

    ALSO READ | Rare mucormycosis cases in small intestine found at Delhi hospital

    AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria has also said that it is better to identify mucormycosis by its name rather than by the colour.

    “Labelling the same fungus with names of different colors can create confusion. Mucormycosis is not a communicable disease, unlike COVID-19. About 90-95 per cent of patients getting infected with mucormycosis are found to have been either diabetic and/or taking steroids. This infection is seen very rarely in those who are neither diabetic nor taking steroids,” he had told reporters recently.

    He had said in general, there are various types of fungal infections such as candida, aspergillosis, cryptococcus, histoplasmosis and coccidioidomycosis.

    Mucormycosis, candida and aspergillosis are the ones observed more in those with low immunity, he said.

    Guleria had also said no definite link of mucormycosis has been seen with oxygen therapy.

  • COVID: MP to ease curfew from June; state sees first case of white fungus

    By PTI
    BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Saturday announced that the coronavirus-induced restrictions in the state would be gradually relaxed from the next month.

    “Our target is to free our state of COVID-19 by May 31. We will have to unlock the coronavirus-induced-curfew gradually from June 1. The world has to move but we will need to unlock in such a manner that COVID-19 doesn’t spread again,” he said at a meeting to review the coronavirus situation.

    Lockdown-like restrictions to contain the spread of coronavirus infection — termed as `curfew’ by the state government — are in force in many cities and towns of MP.

    In most of the districts including Bhopal they have been extended till May 31.

    Several localities in major cities would already be free of COVID-19 infection, Chouhan said in the meeting, a video of which was tweeted by his official Twitter handle.

    “Identify the spots where coronavirus infection is still present and make micro-containment zones. Infected persons should either be isolated at home or shifted to COVID Care Centres,”, the chief minister said.

    The ongoing restrictions should be strictly implemented to break the chain of infection, Chouhan added.

    The positivity rate of COVID-19 — the proportion of infections found among those tested — has come down to 4.82 per cent as of Saturday, he noted.

    At the peak of the second wave in the state, the positivity rate had crossed 20 per cent.

    In 79,737 tests conducted in the state on Saturday, 3,844 persons tested positive, while 9,327 patients were also given discharge during the day, the chief minister informed.

    The recovery rate in the state has gone up to 90.86 percent, Chouhan added.

    The third phase of `Kill-Corona’ campaign in the state will be completed on May 24 and the fourth phase should be started after that, he instructed.

    Medical kits should be provided to every suspected COVID-19 patient with symptoms such as cold and cough, he said.

    On Friday, the state had reported 4,384 new coronavirus cases and 79 deaths, taking the caseload to 7,57,119, and death toll to 7,394.

    Meanwhile, a 55-year-old man who recovered from COVID-19 in Jabalpur has been detected with the white fungus or Aspergillu Flavus infection, making him the first to have the ailment in Madhya Pradesh, a health official said on Saturday.

    The man was operated on May 17 after his headache and eye pain did not subside, and a test on Friday detected the white fungus infection in his nose, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose Medical College’s ENT Department head Dr Kavita Sachdeva told PTI over phone.

    White fungus is curable with medicines and does not need injections like Mucormycosis, better known as black fungus, not is it as deadly as the latter, she said.

    Both affect people with uncontrolled sugar levels, Sachdeva said, adding that white fungus “is not rare and many people have been cured of it earlier”.

    Meanwhile, MP Medical Education Minister Vishwas Sarang said the state had 650 confirmed cases of black fungus, a rare and dangerous fungal infection being found in people with COVID-19 as well as those who have recovered.

    The state had recently declared black fungus a notified disease.

    The state on Saturday saw 3,844 new COVID-19 cases and 89 casualties that raised the tally of infections to 7,60,963 and pushed the toll to 7,483, an official from the state health department said.

    At least 9,327 patients were discharged from hospitals in the last 24 hours, taking the count of recoveries to 6,91,427, the official said.

    With the addition of 863 new cases, Indore’s caseload went up to 1,44,472, while Bhopal’s tally rose to 1,17,130, after 649 persons tested positive for the infection, he said.

    With seven fatalities, the toll in Indore rose to 1,301, while 10 deaths raised Bhopal’s toll to 905, he said.

    Indore and Bhopal now have 9,432 and 9,773 active cases respectively, he said, adding that 62,053 patients are currently undergoing treatment in the state.

    With the addition of 79,737 swab samples tested during the day, the total number of tests conducted in the state has crossed 92.28 lakh.

    Coronavirus figures in MP are as follows: Total cases 7,60,963, new cases 3,844, death toll 7,483, recovered 6,91,427, active cases 62,053, number of tests so far 92,28,270.

  • Covid and mucor hunting together? Experts for studies to find out reasons for black fungus outbreak

    Express News Service
    NEW DELHI: At Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences at Sevagram in Wardha, a major tertiary care centre in rural Maharashtra, nearly 4,000 Covid patients had undergone treatment before March this year.

    None of these patients, however, developed mucormycosis (black fungus) that has now offered a fresh challenge to the healthcare system in India.

    Beginning April through the first week of May, when nearly 1,000 Covid patients were treated at MGIMS, 20 of them went on to develop black fungus, a dreaded disease with a reported fatality rate of nearly 50%, most of whom needed urgent life saving surgeries.

    At present, there are at least 15 patients of this disease caused by a group of molds called mucormycetesin. It infects the sinuses, lungs and brain of the patients.

    Raymond Savio, a critical care expert from Chennai, explains the multiple reasons behind the fungus infecting those with Covid.

    “It’s a combination of the virus infection, nature of treatment, steroid and other immune-suppressants, nature of body’s response to Covid infection (ferritin level), uncontrolled blood sugar and humidification systems for oxygen that makes it appropriate for the spores to infect patients,” he said.

    The sudden and unprecedented rise in mucormycosis cases, however, has prompted SP Kalantri, a senior doctor and medical researcher at MGIMS, like many others in different parts of India, to question whether the popular perception that indiscriminate use of steroids, suppressed immunity, history of diabetes and unhygienic conditions in ICUs may be triggering this spurt in cases.

    “It’s my assumption and I may be completely wrong but maybe Covid virus and mucor are now hunting together, something about Covid virus has changed over the months,” he said, adding that more research is required to understand the rise in the disease.

    ALSO READ | Black fungus: Centre to ramp up production, availability of Amphotericin-B drug

    “All of the factors that are being cited as reasons for rise in mucormycosis existed before March-April too, but why suddenly this fungal infection is being reported now in Covid patients across India?” he asks.

    He has more questions than answers but, in his understanding, so far, it could be something to do with virulence of Covid virus, that is making it easier for opportunistic pathogens like mucor to target weak patients.

    A senior doctor at AIIMS, Delhi said she has been treating autoimmune disease patients with steroids for years but mucormycosis was seen in very rare cases. “There is something that has definitely changed now, but whether it is the use of industrial oxygen or the way oxygen has been instituted in overwhelmed health facilities, I am not sure. That is for researchers and scientists to find out.”

    “But we should try and probe why so many cases are happening and it is especially important because unless we know the reason, we cannot possibly prevent the large outbreaks we are seeing,” she said.

    Unconfirmed data so far suggests that over 5,000 cases of this disease have been reported from several states—including about 200 in Delhi over the last few days, prompting the Centre on Wednesday, to ask states to declare it as epidemic which will make it mandatory for states to report all the cases.

    States, grappling to cater to healthcare needs of Covid patients on the other hand are finding it difficult to manage the alarming rise in mucormycosis cases, especially as its first line of treatment — amphotericinB — has suddenly become out of stock in most places.

    Savio, meanwhile, stressed that while there is no evidence so far that use of industrial oxygen may be triggering it, there are already more than many contributing factors to the rise in mucormycosis.

    “If identified early and started on appropriate treatment, surgical and medical, the outlook is not as bad as is being projected. However, we are already facing a shortage on the drug-of-choice needed for this treatment and we have started resorting to second line anti-fungal agents,” he said.

  • After black fungus, Bihar reports four cases of white fungus in Patna

    By Express News Service
    PATNA: After the spread of black fungus infections, Bihar on Thursday reported four cases of white fungus.

    According to the state health department, the infection of white fungus has been diagnosed with four patients at Patna Medical College and Hospital.

    Till now, complaints of black fungus were reported in Covid patients after their recovery. Now, the problem of white fungus has created a kind of fear psychosis among the Covid patients.

    Dr. SN Singh, head  of the Microbiology, Department of PMCH, confired the white fungus cases. He said all available treatments are being provided to the patients.

    The white fungus damages the skin of the patients and on being neglected, poses threat to the lives of patients.

    So far, more than 50 cases of black fungus have been detected in Bihar. Recently, a doctor and a woman patient lost their lives to black fungus in the state.

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