India’s Covid-19 patients have a new problem: cytomegalovirus
- In the latest complication after ‘black fungus’, doctors are treating patients showing symptoms such as pneumonia and intestinal bleeding
- Doctors suspect steroids used to treat coronavirus patients are responsible, but also that Covid-19 is capable of ‘severe immune suppression’
In New Delhi, all five CMV cases at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital involved severe gastrointestinal bleeding or intestinal obstruction. “Three of them had massive bleeding, one requiring emergency life-saving surgery in the form of the removal of the right side of the colon, while one of them succumbed,” the hospital said in a statement.
Doctors at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital suspect that the steroids used to treat Covid-19 patients are responsible for most CMV cases by virtue of weakening the immune system. Steroids, along with high sugar levels triggered by their use, have also been a factor in black fungus cases.
However, Mumbai-based infectious diseases expert Dr Vasant Nagvekar said hospitals had to keep an eye out for all kinds of infections in post-Covid-19 patients.
“It’s not just steroids or diabetes alone – there is something about Covid-19 that suggests it is capable of severe immune suppression, allowing opportunistic infections to take hold,” he said.
02:15
Rural India struggles to vaccinate villagers despite Covid-19 surge
Dr Able Lawrence, professor of immunology at the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences in Lucknow, is not surprised that post-Covid-19 patients in Mumbai and Delhi are contracting CMV pneumonia.