Senator Sonny Angara Is Back!

Covid-19 brought this survivor to the outbreak’s battleground

- Jane Kingsu Cheng

After Senator Migz Zubiri tested positive for Covid-19 on March 16 and Senator Koko Pimentel III on March 24, other senators took the initiative to take the test to see if they too were infected. Senator Sonny Angara was among them.

“I did suspect I was positive, given that I was experiencing many of the symptoms like fever, body pain, sore throat, diarrhea, cough, and cold,” recalls the 47-year-old senator. He found out he was infected on March 26, 10 days after he took the swab test.

Lonely to be alone

This father of-three immediately shared the results with his wife Tootsy and discussed with her how to break the news to their children. “I felt very uncertain. There is, to this day, still so much that is unknown about the virus,” he says, admitting to being stubborn, thinking he could get better on his own at home. It was his wife who pushed him to seek medical help. “Covid-19 is really so unpredictable, which is partly why I had to be confined. I didn’t know how I would react to some of the medicines being administered,” he explains.

Though he stayed in the hospital for just a little over a week, he wasn’t prepared for the next few days of solitude. “Mentally and emotionally, it was tough to be alone in a room without visitors,” recounts the senator who had previously never been seriously ill. “The fear of the unknown weighed heavy upon me, especially when the doctors said they had seen patients who turned from breathing normally one day to being intubated the next.” He added that the healthcare workers he got to interact with were wearing full personal protection equipment, so he couldn’t see any of their faces.