Dr. Ronak Shukla, an ear, nose and throat doctor assigned to COVID-19 care at the government-run LG Hospital in Ahmedabad, treated a 35-year-old male patient who recently recovered from COVID-19 after being administered oxygen for a week in the intensive care unit. Several days after recovering from COVID-19, the patient was back, complaining of an intense headache, pain in the sinus area and the right eye, blurred vision and swollen cheeks. An endoscopic examination revealed discoloration — a blackened area — around the nasal sinuses.
The disease progresses rapidly and "attacks blood vessels and live tissues," Shukla says. "As it kills them, it turns them all black — and that's where [the disease] gets the name 'black fungus.' " In just three days, it can spread to the eyes or the jawbone. In such cases, the only way to stop the spread to the brain is to remove the infected eye or jawbone surgically.
"Once it spreads to the brain, the fatality rate is over 50%. It's sad to think that people who've gone through the immense distress of COVID now have to deal with this severe disability as well," he says.