Mucormycosis: The 'black fungus' maiming Covid patients in India

On Saturday morning, Dr Akshay Nair, a Mumbai-based eye surgeon, was waiting to operate on a 25-year-old woman who had recovered from a bout of Covid-19 three weeks ago. Inside the surgery, an ear, nose and throat specialist was already at work on the patient, a diabetic. He had inserted a tube in her nose and was removing tissues infected with mucormycosis, a rare but dangerous fungal infection. This aggressive infection affects the nose, eye and sometimes the brain. After his colleague finished, Dr Nair would carry out a three hour procedure to remove the patient's eye.