Chennai
“At least 2,822 people have been affected by black fungus so far. A total of 7,000 beds are ready in Tamil Nadu to treat these patients, of which Chennai has 500. Our State is treating them better compared to other states because we have been focusing on this since the beginning,” said Health Minister Ma Subramanian. The committee is hopeful of a decline in the number of cases in the coming weeks as a decreasing trend is being noticed in the recent two weeks. “We have given the interim report to the Chief Minister and cases have started coming down.
There were about 100-140 cases on a daily basis when the cases started surfacing but now it has come down to about 20-30 daily cases throughout the State,” said ENT specialist and head of Mucormycosis task force committee Dr Mohan Kameshwaran. Tamil Nadu recorded six per cent mortality due to mucormycosis in the State and a total of 148 people succumbed to the infection so far. The members of the committee say the deaths due to mucormycosis were mainly due to late diagnosis as the infection had reached the brain. “We had several challenges including lack of awareness among people, short supply of antifungal drugs, but the strategy for the disease seems to have worked. The cases have started to come down and we should be able to see a decline in the coming days,” said Dr Mohan Kameshwaran. He added that the immune response of the patients seems to have been affected in cases of delta variant as they have been found to have developed Mucormycosis post-COVID, though these patients did not have Diabetes.
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