Pacquiao vows to shoulder expenses of boxer in coma

MANILA – The medical needs of Kenneth Egano, the Sarangani bantamweight who slipped into a coma after winning his eightround fight late Saturday, May 6 in Cavite, will be shouldered by boxing legend Manny Pacquiao.

Egano collapsed while he was awaiting the official result of his bout against Jason Facularin in Imus and was brought to the hospital after paramedics attended to him on top of the ring.

“There is nothing more precious than human life,” Pacquiao said from General Santos City upon learning Egano’s condition.

Pacquiao, whose boxing program Blow-By-Blow staged the Egano-Facularin match, has instructed his staff in Manila to make sure Egano receives all the help he needs.

Egano, 22, is now confined at the Imus Doctors Hospital and was scheduled to undergo an on operation last Sunday, May 7. The fighter’s parents were scheduled to arrive on Monday, May 8 on a flight from General Santos City after Blow-By-Blow staffers sent them flight tickets. Watching over Egano at the hospital is his trainer, Dexter Benatero.

Egano and Facularin was the night’s most exciting fight and talks were already under way that they would be paired again sometime in July.

Egano, who made his BlowBy-Blow debut last February in General Santos City, entered the fight armed with a 6-1 win-loss record with three knockouts.

The Davao City-born Facularin, 23, came into the showdown with an unblemished mark of 4-0 with 4 wins inside the distance.

Pacquiao, who also fought in Blow-By-Blow when he was still on the way up, swears “boxing is truly a dangerous sport and the boxers deserve nothing but respect as they put their lives on the line.”

“Other sports you play, but you don’t play boxing,” added the eight-division champion. (Philstar.com) photo

Egano, 22, is now confined at the Imus Doctors Hospital.

Not yet over

THE World Health Organization has announced that COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency, but stressed that the pandemic is not yet over. This announcement could prove to be as confusing as the WHO’s declaration of COVID as a public health emergency of international concern or PHEIC on Jan. 20, 2020.

The PHEIC is supposed to be the highest alert level that the WHO can declare, but the term and the acronym were gobbledygook for many governments, which waited for a clear pronouncement about a pandemic. This came only on March 11, over a month after the Philippines recorded its first two COVID-19 patients. These were tourists from the Chinese city of Wuhan, Ground Zero of the disease, with the man becoming the first COVID-19 fatality outside China and the first in the Philippines. Days later, the Duterte administration placed Metro Manila, and then the entire Luzon, under strict lockdown. No one wants to return to those lockdowns, meant to prevent the spread of the lethal virus at a time when there was still no vaccine in sight, but which put the economy on the path to its worst recession since World War II. Today there is a debate even over continued masking in public places. While the InterAgency Task Force has said there is no need to restore mask mandates, it still bears noting

Editorial

that confirmed COVID cases and positivity rates have been steadily rising in the past weeks amid the detection of highly transmissible strains of the Omicron variant.

While Omicron has produced mostly mild symptoms especially among the vaccinated and boosted, it can still lead to infections that are serious enough to require hospitalization. It can still lead to death.

Health experts have warned of waning immunity from vaccines and previous infection.

From May 1 to 7, daily COVID cases nationwide surged to an average of 1,352 – 112 percent higher than the 637 daily cases recorded from April 24 to 30, according to the Department of Health. In the first week of May, the DOH recorded 9,465 cases – the highest since November last year. As of May 7, the country had 410 severe and critical cases, with 346 occupying beds in intensive care units. Another 3,766 were in regular hospital beds. Nine COVID deaths were recorded in the first week of May, along with 50 additional and severe critical cases. Health officials previously said masking and other minimum health protocols such as hand and respiratory hygiene are minor sacrifices in avoiding a disease that can still cause hospitalization and its attendant expenses, debilitation through long COVID and even death.

The WHO has said the pandemic is not over. The past three years have shown that it’s better to be safe than sorry. (Philstar.com)