COVID-19: IIT Kanpur student succumbs to black fungus

NEW DELHI: A student of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, succumbed to mucormycosis or black fungus, Tuesday evening. “We lost a bright and promising student”, Abhay Karandikar, director IIT Kanpur wrote in a Facebook post.

Kavindra Kumar Chaturvedi, a PhD student in the department of aerospace engineering was being treated for post COVID-19 complications in Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGI) Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

“We did everything to save him including arranging medicines through a board member (an IITK alumnus) of a pharma company but despite best effort by his doctors, family, friends and the Institute, he could not be saved”, Karandikar added in the post.

IIT Delhi and IIT Roorkee have both lost students to the pandemic. MTech student Prem Singh died on April 14 at IIT Roorkee. He had been staying at the campus’ quarantine centre but had tested negative for the coronavirus. Another research scholar of IIT Delhi, Devanshi Mishra lost her battle with COVID-19 on April 20. She was at home.

COVID-19 and IITs

The IIT Kanpur campus was shut again in April, during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. By April 21, around 100 students on the campus had tested positive and had been quarantined in two guest houses. All classes are being conducted online. On May 3, the education ministry asked all central institutions, including the IITs, to put offline exams on hold due to the spike in COVID-19 cases; a few days later, the University Grants Commission (UGC) extended that directive to all universities, state and central.

But even before that, the IITs were taking steps to ease the burden on students who may have been infected themselves or had family members who were. IIT Delhi relaxed attendance requirements and extended deadlines for academic work. IIT Kharagpur declared semester-break for first-year BTech students.

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