COVID-19 is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and has infected over 200 million people, causing over 4 million deaths. COVID-19 infection has been shown to lead to hypoxia, immunosuppression, host iron depletion, hyperglycemia secondary to diabetes mellitus, as well as prolonged hospitalizations. These clinical manifestations provide favorable conditions for opportunistic fungal pathogens to infect hosts with COVID-19. Interventions such as treatment with corticosteroids and mechanical ventilation may further predispose COVID-19 patients to acquiring fungal coinfections. Our literature review found that fungal coinfections in COVID-19 infected patients were most commonly caused by Aspergillus, Candida species, Cryptococcus neoformans, and fungi of the Mucorales order. The distribution of these infections, particularly Mucormycosis, was found to be markedly skewed towards low- and middle-income countries. The purpose of this review is to identify possible explanations for the increase in fungal coinfections seen in COVID-19 infected patients so that physicians and healthcare providers can be conscious of factors that may predispose these patients to fungal coinfections in order to provide more favorable patient outcomes. After identifying risk factors for coinfections, measures should be taken to minimize the dosage and duration of drugs such as corticosteroids, immunosuppressants, and antibiotics.

A multicontact probe placed near the wall has been used to study the distribution of the divertor fluxes over the minor azimuth in stellarator and torsatron regimes of the Saturn machine. It has been found that the plasma flux towards the outer part of the torus is much higher than the flux measured along the direction to the inner part. The plasma fluxes are localized in the vicinity of the apexes of the magnetic surfaces and their azimuthal width near the wall does not exceed 1/18th of the vacuum chamber circumference.

The authors measure the losses of charged particles and heat via the electrons in the toroidal ℓ = 3 Saturn stellarator with large shear (θmax ≲ 0.25). From an analysis of the relationships derived they conclude that the pseudoclassical nature of the energy losses observed is due to the presence of drift modes in the plasma. The particle losses for shear θ < 0.05 are determined by the turbulence of the plasma, whereas at θ > 0.05 the diffusion both in magnitude and functional dependence matches the neoclassical theory.

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A toroidal ℓ = 3 stellarator with large shear (θmax < 0.25) is used to study the oscillations of a steady-state microwave discharge plasma, and the values of the correlation coefficient between density and electric field fluctuations and turbulent plasma fluxes are measured by the correlation method. It is shown that the oscillations observed are due to the drift-dissipative instability. The influence of shear on the amplitude of drift oscillations, on the cross-correlation coefficient and on the turbulent fluxes due to drift instabilities is analysed. A threshold value of shear (θcr ≈ 0.05) is found above which a substantial reduction in the oscillation level (⟨δne2⟨1/2/ne ∼θ−1.5) and in the magnitude of turbulent plasma fluxes (Γ̄ ∼ θ−3) can be noted.