COVID‑19 & Mucormycosis in India: The Double Epidemic Crisis

 

Black Fungus, the name has given chills to most of the COVID-19 patients, especially COVID-19-hid Diabetics. In a nation where diabetes is a very common ailment, or say world diabetic capital, what’s more threatening is that India has the worst COVID-affected cases. In a country where there are more than 2 million diabetic cases, combining youth and old age, older age people are worse hit. Black fungus has about 54% mortality rate, in my previous article I had discussed a possibility where covid might mutate and form a different virus with pre-existing viruses but the case of parallely having two distinctive ailments never occurred to me, I think that was a close call of possibility that I had counted on, none the less now that we have see worse of both the ailments, mucormycosis has turned out to be a nightmare in a nightmare.

What we are essentially looking at now is a rare and dangerous fungal infection which is noting new that we don’t know of but the number of cases that we are seeing today are very high which means in covid we have another problem to deal with. while it is being termed as another epidemic inside a pandemic to deal with, now India will have to battle with limited force on two fronts, one is covid and another is mucormycosis. While people are unconcerned about how doctors will split up and manage the two major diseases, here is what we as people can do to ease the burden on the already cracked-up health system.

While we already know what mucormycosis is, let’s just think of preventing this lethal disease because “Prevention is always better than cure.”

·         The disease is said to be caused by to rampant use of steroids; the problem is not in steroids but their aftereffects, which include increasing sugar levels and decreasing immunity. These are immune suppressants.

Oral steroids are a common cause of immune suppression and are used in numerous conditions. They are more likely to lower your immune defenses when used at high doses for long periods of time. Lower doses do not generally cause a problem. For an adult, a dose of 40 mg per day of prednisolone for more than a week may cause immune suppression, but this dose varies for other steroids and children.

·         A patient who has recently recovered from COVID is generally prescribed these steroids to treat inflammation, due to which the immunity gets lowered. If the patient has no co-morbidities, it's ok, but if he/ she does have co-morbidities, a huge problem awaits them. Having established that the virus May posses an ability to hibernate, this becomes concerning that even after testing negative if the patient is positive then they might get hit even harder and being on steroids makes it worse, suppressing your immunity while the virus is sleeping is like throwing a big basket at a sleeping hungry lion and inviting him to eat you. “free dinner”

·         People already suffering from diabetes (both type 1 and 2) are at higher risk now, as with rampant use of steroids, not only reduces your immunity, but it also increases your blood sugar, which means it’s a double attack; both conditions are conducive environments for all sorts of infections and fungus

So, are we saying that we need not take steroids as part of the COVID-19 recovery treatment?

Nope, we cannot make such suggestion, its for the doctor to decide, what you can do it ask your doctor to suggest methods to escape such miserable fatality, I believe good blood circulation, exercise and natural diet will do the trick, with good blood circulation in body one can eliminate all the toxic elements in one’s body, and with proper diet one can manage blood sugar, for the people who are old aged and incapable of exercise can always retort to the old yoga methods (they are not useless, They do work and the efficiency is quite good).

Mucormycosis is a very opportunistic fungal infection; it's always around you, but it waits till your walls are down, meaning your immunity is weak, and the moment it's weak, it invades the system, with a high mortality rate. It is one of the lethal fungal infections. So, even the slightest trace of a symptom has to be heeded to and every condition is to be taken seriously.

These are the symptoms of mucormycosis.

 

What else can we do?

Well apart from being cautious and strengthen your immune system just make sure you take care of your hygiene, clean every thing you use, if you visit a hospital (especially a hospital, it’s a jungle of diseases, you do not know whose carrying what) just be extra cautious to clean off your hands and all your belongings. In a shot, be like an OCD patient, extra careful and extremely concerned about your hygiene and surroundings.

Remember to be safe and sound, your family needs you