EDITORIAL - Rising again

This has to be the saddest Holy Week in decades. Around the world, tens of thousands of lives have been lost to the coronavirus disease 2019, and several thousands more await their fate. There was no Holy Week rest for the thousands on the frontlines who are risking infection to battle COVID-19 and save lives.

Even among the healthy, there is growing despair amid the uncertainty posed by lost jobs and livelihood sources. The global economy is contracting and recovery is going to be slow, with a vaccine for COVID still at least a year away.

The Passion of Christ had special poignancy for the thousands around the world who could not be with their loved ones who suffered from COVID, and then could not even give the departed a proper burial. Pope Francis has been leading his flock in storming the heavens, praying and holding masses in eerily empty churches, pleading for an end to this devastating pandemic.

And yet even the pandemic cannot eliminate the abiding message of hope this Easter Sunday. In the Philippines, the government is ramping up testing for COVID-19 and rolling out quarantine and isolation facilities for both the infected and suspected cases. Frontliners are getting more personal protective equipment. Financial and other forms of assistance are being rolled out for the hardest hit sectors.

On Holy Wednesday, China ended the lockdown of Wuhan, epicenter of the contagion in that country and believed to be where the coronavirus originated, lifting the travel ban as no infections were recorded in the city for several weeks. In South Korea, two patients recovered after getting plasma transfusion from other patients who had survived COVID-19. Significantly, the two who recovered were both elderly – a 71-year-old man and a 67-year-old woman – bringing hope to a sector believed to be the most vulnerable to the disease.

So there are some pieces of good news, some light at the end of this pitch-black tunnel. Like Jesus Christ, humanity will rise again, surviving this 21st century plague, becoming better and stronger. A blessed Easter to everyone!