WHO’s New List Sheds Light on World’s Deadliest Fungi
Surgery to remove mucormycosis from a patient who recovered from Covid-19 in Allahabad, India, in 2021.
Photographer: Ritesh Shukla/Getty Images
Hi, this is Naomi in Berlin. It’s mushroom-hunting season here in Germany, but today we’re going to talk about scarier types of fungus. First, though...
As the delta variant swept through India last year, so did another dangerous disease: mucormycosis, a fungal infection that killed more than a third of people who got it. Known locally as “black fungus,” the pathogen sickened more than 47,000 people in India in three months, in part, doctors believe, because the steroids used to treat Covid hobbled the immune system’s usual knockout response to the fungus spores.