Early on, Ateneo de Manila Professor Fabian Dayrit came out with the theory that virgin coconut oil (vco) might be the antidote to the COVID-19. After a relatively long time, the DOST funded a study by UP researchers or doctors to validate such claim. Just like any government initiative, however, that takes forever to accomplish anything, we still have to hear about the results of the study.
Now, a private initiative to test the effectiveness of vco on COVID-19 patients by Dayrit himself and Equilibrium Integrative Health Clinic Medical Director Dr. Jose Rey Mondejar came out with initial results as published by the Manila Bulletin in its issue the other day.
“After two weeks of trial, Mondejar said 45 out of the 69 patients tested negative in their reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests. While the other 24 did “not progress to moderate or severe” cases.”
Such results are promising if not a positive indication that vco is an effective remedy against the dreaded virus. As found out, within five to seven days, some of the patients already tested negative from the disease.
Here is another homegrown one against the COVID-19, a test kit invented by UP scientists. This was presented to the public last March 12, 2020. It was used for sometime and then the FDA cited several minor issues against the kits. So they ordered the use of the kits to be stopped.
After months, while people were dying due to COVID-19, the minor issues were supposed to have been fixed. So on July 10, 2020, the DOH announced the approval of the kits for commercial use.
Were there really minor issues or the usage of the kits was stopped to justify the purchase of imported ones (usually from China) which were a lot more expensive? The answer to the question might never be known to the public but so many people know that government purchases are where so many government bureaucrats or officers make money through corruption.
The UP test kits cost over a thousand pesos per unit only whose test results would be known in a day but other imported products on the market used to cost the government more than P8,000.00 per unit and whose findings were not so reliable and would take days to be known. Hundreds of millions of pesos were already spent by the government for such imported test kits. What a waste of your (taxpayers’) money.
Did it really take that long to fix the minor issues? Or that was the time required for some people to make some money? Actually a lot of money.**