Will he make it to the Senate?

“The President enters the senatorial fray with a decidedly unfair advantage.”

You certainly can’t blame Rodrigo Duterte for wanting to remain in power beyond his constitutionally mandated term of six years as president.

At first he had planned to run as vice president under the banner of the ruling party, the PDP-Laban. This would apparently act as a shield from possible prosecution  by the International Criminal Court that wants to investigate him for alleged crimes against humanity in the course of his bloody war on drugs from 2016 to 2019. During that period, some 8,000 drug suspects were killed after they supposedly fought back in legitimate police operations, with double to triple that number also apparently murdered by vigilante groups. Not one of these killers has been apprehended nor has seen the inside of a cramped and fetid jail.

After a survey found that majority of Filipinos frowned on the idea of him running for vice president — we presume the people considered this an affront to or a travesty of the constitutional provision that the president’s term is a fixed six years with no reelection — Duterte said he would retire from politics and focus on preparing his legal defense against any ICC indictment.

But all of a sudden, out of the blue, he said recently that he would be willing to run as vice-presidential candidate again, then settled days ago for a senatorial slot in the Bong Go-led political alliance with an obscure political group.

Rody, aka Digong, enters the senatorial fray with a decidedly unfair advantage. He has at his disposal the intelligence fund of the Office of the President running into billions of pesos that can be spent as he wishes for his campaign without the Commission on Audit looking over his shoulder.

But can he be sure that he would be elected as senator?

We have no doubt that the entire machinery of government and its resources would be mobilized to ensure that he leaves Malacañan Palace on June 30, 2022 not as a retired president but as a neophyte senator.

And our next question is: Will he be an asset to the Senate where members of the opposition can cross swords with him on key issues such as human rights?

By the way, when will Digong show us his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALNs) that he has so far refused to make public for reasons only he knows?

After all, public officials without exception are required by the Constitution to file their respective SALNs as an anti-graft measure and adherence to the good governance principles of transparency and accountability.

An end to the COVID-19 pandemic?

Now for the good news. Or the less depressing one.

Reports indicate at least three oral drugs are being tested that could put an end to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pfizer has developed the drug Paxlovid as the first oral antiviral treatment available for people with COVID-19. It has already  received approval for use by the government of the United Kingdom.

Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and Merck Sharp & Dohme have also received approval for their oral antiviral Molnupiravir to be used in COVID-19 patients in the U.K. following the results of a phase 3 clinical trial that found a reduced risk of death or hospitalization by 50 percent compared with placebo.

Roche/Atea has its own candidate drug in phase 2 and 3 trials.

Many pharmaceutical companies have other candidate drugs in development in the hope that these could help reduce hospitalizations and transmission.

The most promising appears to be for Molnupiravir, a combination of Pfizer’s candidate drug PF-07321332 and HIV antiretroviral drug ritonavir, now formally called Paxlovid. The results show that it is safe in humans at concentrations that are effective against SARS-CoV-2 in laboratory tests. This holds both when the drug is used on its own and when it is used alongside ritonavir.

Both Pfizer’s and Merck’s candidate drugs are described as protease inhibitors. Scientists believe that drug cocktails can be used to reduce the likelihood of drug resistant mutations cropping up. Instead of striking upon a single mutation that confers resistance to one drug, the virus must acquire two or more different mutations to generate resistance to both drugs simultaneously.

The drugs being developed by Pfizer and Ridgeback/Merkh offer hope that COVID-19, though unlikely to be eliminated soon, could become endemic, making tools for its ongoing control paramount. Vaccines are the mainstay of prevention, but treatment will be needed for those who decline vaccination or for those who have been vaccinated but with moderate infections.

It’s not just the Western countries that are making headway in fighting COVID-19. China is also said to be making steady progress in research and development on a COVID-19 oral drug. China National Biotec Group, a subsidiary of Sinopharm, claims  its drug based on a specific immune globulin has been approved by medical regulators in China and the United Arab Emirates and is under clinical trials.

Experts have cautioned, however, that the market should not be overly optimistic about the oral antiviral drugs as vaccination and supporting treatments remain the key approach in fighting COVID-19.

Nevertheless, if the oral anti-COVID drugs could be made commercially available by next year, then we can transition to the new normal  sooner than expected.

ernhil@yahoo.com