One of the customs and beliefs that we have assimilated from our Chinese ancestors here in our country is observing every 8th of every August as the start of the so-called “ghost” month. It runs up to Sept. 6. But the Chinese Ghost Festival, to commemorate and honor the dearly departed, is highlighted on Aug. 22, or the month’s 15th lunar day.
The month of the “Hungry Ghost Festival” is a much avoided time. Because some believe it is simply bad luck. During the festival, believers refrain from traveling or celebrating big ceremonies while businessmen postpone buying real estate and entering into contracts or agreements. But if these activities cannot be avoided, food offering is given to appease the departed souls.
On a personal note, I dread the month of August because it was around those days last year when my family became victims of the dreaded coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection. It was my frontliner doctor-son who first contracted COVID-19 infection. He developed flu-like symptoms like fever, headaches, and body aches and later on, lost his sense of smell and taste.
He went into isolation in his bedroom and required all of us in the house to get tested for COVID-19. True enough, we also later turned positive for COVID-19. Despite my co-morbidities of asthma and hypertension, I got lucky I guess when it turned out to be just an asymptomatic case. I lost though my sense of smell for quite a while.
My doctor-son prescribed me to take antibiotics, Vitamin C, and melatonin tablet every night. Although he was infected, he did not take any of the anti-COVID drugs that are still under the investigational or experimental stage up to now. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) has allowed them under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).
On the side, however, I drank everyday a cup of hot turmeric ginger tea with honey, Vitamin C-rich juices, and even took a tablespoon everyday of virgin coconut oil which was highly recommended and reportedly good in fighting off the effects of COVID-19 infection. Being just asymptomatic, I worked from home to isolate myself from infecting my co-workers at The STAR.
But it took me two additional swab tests and more than a month before I turned negative on COVID-19. The dead tissues from the virus could still be detected if one undergoes a swab test two to three weeks after.
During those early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, all vaccines were still in the final stages of development. The WHO seemed helpless and could only monitor the COVID-19 pandemic cases all around the world. With death tolls due to COVID-19 infection rising, countries – rich or poor – resorted to closing down their borders and imposing lockdowns, including us in the Philippines.
All that the WHO could do during those times was to bombard us with all recommended anti-COVID health protocols from wearing masks; observing physical distancing; washing hands with soap and water, if not available, then use hand sanitizers with 70 percent ethyl alcohol; etc.
For lack of immediate solution, the WHO preached to all governments to “test, test, test” against potential COVID-19 carriers. The WHO prescribed massive contact tracing and isolation of all COVID-19 asymptomatic carriers in quarantine facilities. For those needing treatment, hospitals were all required to put up additional beds, wards, ventilators, and intensive care units dedicated to COVID-19 cases.
It was only toward December last year when the WHO granted EUA on the first anti-COVID vaccine developed by the Oxford’s AstraZeneca. It was the first international pharmaceutical company that already reached the stage of phase 3 clinical trials that got the approval of the WHO as safe and efficacious to use for humans. And in succession, Pfizer and other pharma companies secured one after the other their respective EUAs from the WHO.
But vaccine-makers could only produce so much at prices that only the rich and big nations could afford to corner the bulk of pre-ordered vaccines for their own people.
Thankfully, the WHO came up with COVAX Facility where the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Japan and other rich nations contributed their excess anti-COVID vaccines to poorer nations. So far, the Philippines got much of the more than half of the 20 million doses of anti-COVID vaccines from AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen donated to the COVAX Facility.
The development of vaccines is apparently not enough to contain the spread of the pandemic. Countries like the US, the UK, Japan, Australia, and others continue to experience second, third waves of COVID-19 surges. As it turned out, these COVID-19 cases were due to mutated variants that are more transmissible than the original strain of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SAR-nCOV-2).
The WHO resorted to calling them by Greek names instead of the country origin where it was first detected. Formerly called the UK strain is now labelled as the Alpha variant. The South African variant is Beta; the Brazil variant as Gamma; and, the Indian variant as Delta. The WHO cited this was to simplify discussions, but also to help remove some stigma from the countries concerned.
The rising trend of the COVID cases here prompted President Rodrigo Duterte to re-impose a hard lockdown last March at the National Capital Region (NCR) where cases of foreign variants were detected. At the weekly meeting of the Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID) with President Duterte last Monday night, Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque reported 54 percent of samples that underwent genome sequencing confirmed we have COVID cases with Alpha, Beta or Delta variants. And a higher 59 percent of the “samples sequenced” showed these variants came from returning overseas Filipinos.
Thus, the Philippines finds itself considered anew as a “high-risk” country on COVID-19 infection. As August started, we’re back to a hard lockdown from Aug.6-20. Whether we believe it or not, I think it’s best to avoid the “ghost” month of bad luck getting COVID.
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