Mucormycosis: India records more than 4,300 'black fungus' deaths
More than 4,300 people have died of the deadly "black fungus" in India in a growing epidemic that mainly affects Covid-19 patients.
India has reported 45,374 cases of this rare and dangerous infection, called mucormycosis, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has said.
Steroids reduce inflammation in the lungs for Covid-19 and appear to help stop some of the damage that can happen when the body's immune system goes into overdrive to fight off the coronavirus.
It's thought that this drop in immunity could be triggering cases of mucormycosis in diabetics or severely immunocompromised individuals, such as cancer patients or people with HIV/Aids.
Dr Raghuraj Hegde, a Bangalore-based eye surgeon who has treated a number of mucormycosis patients, told the BBC that there had been "massive undercounting of both cases and deaths" from the disease.
"Typically, deaths in mucormycosis occur weeks to months after getting the disease. Our present systems are not good to capture that data," he said.
