Baguio nurse joins WHO trials for COVID-19 treatment

At the height of the lockdown in Baguio City, residents managed To express their gratitude To medical frontliners like the owner of this vehicle along downtown Session Road. VINCENT CABREZA

BAGUIO CITY — The World Health Organization’s “solidarity trials” for a cure to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has invited an infected Baguio nurse to participate.

John Delinger Batulan, who works for the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center, signed up on June 2, the same day a mandatory test confirmed he had contracted the disease, according to the Baguio City public information office on Saturday.

The WHO project compares the efficacy of the drug Remdesivir being developed by Gilead Sciences Inc., Lopinavir from the firm Hetero Labs Ltd. and Interferon which is being manufactured by American pharmaceutical company Merck Shark and Dohme.

“I want to be part of the solution to this health problem despite the risks and the challenges. The medicine may not be effective to me but the results will help determine if it can be effective to other patients,” Batulan said in a statement. The nurse is also a cancer survivor.

Batulan’s brother has also been infected with the disease, based on laboratory results released on June 4.