While district Meerut recorded the highest number of 2190 Covid positive cases on Saturday in the state, 4 cases of potentially fatal and rare “black fungus” infection have also been detected in Covid 19 patients here.

Cases of black fungus have been reported so far in Maharashtra and Gujarat and now it is perhaps for the first time that Covid 19 patients in Uttar Pradesh are reported to have been infected with this disease in Meerut.

Assistant Chief Medical Officer (ACMO) Dr Pooja Sharma confirmed to the media on Tuesday that the rare black fungus infection has been detected in two Covid-19 patients undergoing treatment in a private hospital in Meerut. Dr Sharma told the media that of these two patients one is from Muzaffarnagar and another from Bijnor.

Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr Akhilesh Mohan said that he is keeping an eye on the situation and has sought a report from the hospital in this regard.

Two more cases of black fungus have been reported by Dr Shakeel Ahmad, Ophthalmologist and chairman and chief medical director of Vision Care Superspeciality Eye Hospital in the district.

Dr Ahmad claimed that last week, in his OPD, he came across two patients who had developed ‘ black fungus’ after recovering from Covid-19. Of these one is a woman in her 60’s from Hapur.

“Black fungus, which is also called mucormycosis, is a rare and fatal fungal infection that could be cured at its initial stage with basic treatment,” he said adding that use of high flow of oxygen during treatment of Covid 19 patients infuses moisture inside which causes serious problems starting with nasal congestion and also affecting eyes in some cases.

Meerut district recorded 2190 Covid positive cases with 10 deaths in a single day on Saturday. Shockingly, this data of positive cases is only out of 4656 tests that were done on Saturday. Prior to this on May 4, 1678 positive cases were recorded in a single day. But this was out of 7177 samples that were tested on that day. This indicates the alarming situation in Meerut.

So far in the 10 days of the month of May, 13081 positive cases and 78 deaths have been reported. Presently, the number of active cases in Meerut is 17682 while 542 persons have lost their lives.