Pfizer and GSK vaccines for RSV get govt backing for use in older adults

By Matthew Griffin & Suzi Ring

The recipients were Luheng Aloy Cayok, a 103-year-old Tboli elder from Barangay San Jose, General Santos City, and 101-year-old Blaan matriarch Rebecca Latimbon Sambog of Tupi, South Cotabato. Both were teary-eyed when they received their cash gifts from the Department of Social Welfare and Development—Soccsksargen (DSWD12) and the National Commission of Senior Citizens (NCSC) Regional Cluster 7.

“I am so happy. Salamat, salamat [thank you, thank you],” Cayok was quoted as saying in his native Tboli in a joint statement by DSWD-12 and NCSC.

Cayok had just celebrated his 103rd birthday last February 28 in General Santos City.

On the other hand, Sambog also received her P100,000 cash gift on Thursday afternoon at her residence in Barangay Kablon, Tupi town.

Aside from the P100,000 cash gift from the DSWD, both centenarians also received an additional P10,000 each as cash gift from the NCSC through Commissioner Edwin G. Espejo. Both centenarians also received a letter of felicitation from President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.

The centenarian cash grant is mandated under Republic Act 10868 or the Centenarian Act of 2016, which seeks to honor and grant additional benefits and privileges to Filipino centenarians.

“This is in recognition of their invaluable contributions to our society and in nation-building,” said Espejo, whose NCSC Cluster 7 area includes Region 10 (Northern Mindanao), Region 12 (Soccsksargen) and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Labinia Bañes, DSWD-12 focal person for senior citizens, said they endorsed the release of the centenarian gifts following a meticulous assessment of documents submitted by the families of the beneficiaries in coordination with their respective local government units (LGUs).

“We matched their documents with other existing records and conducted proper validation to ensure that the grants are given to the deserving recipients,” she said.

To date, Bañes said some 30 verified centenarians in Region 12 have received their P100,000 cash gift, with some LGUs granting additional incentives to the beneficiaries.

This week alone, DSWD approved the release of the centenarian cash gifts of nine centenarians in the region, including Cayok and Sambog.

In General Santos City, centenarians get an additional P100,000 cash gift from the LGU and those still living receive a monthly medical stipend of P5,000. Similarly, the South Cotabato provincial government grants qualified centenarians a one-time cash gift of P20,000 each.

Bañes said other LGUs in the region grant additional one-time incentives ranging from P10,000 to P100,000, food packs and other goods.

The Soccsksargen Region comprises the provinces of South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani, and North Cotabato, and the cities of General Santos, Koronadal, Tacurong and Kidapawan. PNA

Why some friendships shouldn’t last

we outgrow. The connection is often based on the past, and the past is sometimes best left alone. Friendships can end because we’ve evolved and don’t connect over the same thing.

By Nick Tayag

my sixty-zen’s WORtH

SHOTS from Pfizer Inc. and GSK Plc that prevent respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) received backing from a panel of US public health advisers for use in older adults, paving the way for the preventives to be used in a vulnerable population.

In two separate votes Wednesday, advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended the shots in people aged 60 and older after consultation with their doctors. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky will decide whether to finalize the recommendations.

GSK stock fell slightly in early trading in London on Thursday. Pfizer shares were little changed in trading after US markets closed Wednesday.

The annual cause of an estimated 64 million infections and 160,000 deaths worldwide, RSV is emerging as an attractive market for drugmakers. Yearly sales of RSV shots for older adults could total as much as $10 billion by 2032, according to an analysis in March. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the vaccines have been awaiting use recommendations from the CDC.

The shots reduce the risk of contracting RSV, trial data show. Yet some panel members raised concerns, including over pricing that has not been finalized and the possibility of rare side effects. Older people who get the shots should do so “using shared clinical decision-making”, the panel said. The panel first voted 9-5 for its recommendation for adults 65 and older, then 13-0 with one abstention for adults aged 60-64.

Side effects

R ESEARCHERS identified neurological disorders in a handful of people who received the vaccines, as well as a slightly higher rate of a heart condition called atrial fibrillation, though trials did not determine what caused the conditions. The companies will monitor people who receive the shot for side effects.

“No intervention is completely safe,” said Michael Melgar, co-leader of a working group that studied the vaccines, noting that other common vaccinations can cause rare side effects.

GSK’s shot was first to win US approval last month, after scientists spent decades searching for an effective RSV vaccine. Called Arexvy, it has been touted by the company as a potential blockbuster.

Supply available

PFI zER gained US regulatory approval for its vaccine, called Abrysvo, in older adults less than a month after GSK. The companies will now go head-to-head to convince doctors and insurers to use their shots.

The recommendations came as

GSK also released more data showing its shot provides protection against the virus across two seasons. The results found the vaccine could be given every other year rather than annually with the same impact, providing a potential market advantage for GSK.

Pfizer was first to win a nod from an FDA advisory committee for a shot for pregnant mothers to protect their newborns, and it produced positive top-line results from a late-stage study to administer Abrysvo alongside flu vaccines in adults 65 and older.

The drug giant is starting clinical trials for its RSV shot in young, healthy children and in high-risk children and adults.

Both Pfizer and GSK have said they expect to have supply available ahead of the next RSV season this fall. With assistance from Deirdre Hipwell / Bloomberg

Six couples celebrating their 50th anniversary get ₧50,000 cash gifts

MOST people believe friendships should last a lifetime. They think that ending a friendship is always a bad thing. Best Friends Forever or BFF is an overused acronym they love to tout on chatrooms and other platforms.

Take it from me, a seasoned collector of friends. “Friendship is forever” is not necessarily true. Over the years, I have found myself drifting away from friends, some of whom were once my close pals. And vice versa. In life, there are friendships that naturally end as our values, interests, and perspectives shift. Has a friend drifted away and you feel like you must have done something to offend him? Don’t feel guilty too fast. Truth is, there are friends we need to cut off from our lives. Not every person is meant to stay in our lives forever.

There are friendships that

I have a former friend, a former friend who acts as if he hasn’t met me when we find ourselves invited by a mutual acquaintance to a party. He avoids bumping into me, so I avoid getting near him, as if we’re in a kind of silent “iwas-iwas” rigodon dance. Is it because he’s now upwardly mobile, and socially well established after marrying into a wealthy family? Is he avoiding me because he doesn’t want his current friends to know his financially destitute past? Does he want to delete the fact that we both once used to frequent cheap beer garden joints after office hours?

I also have cut off ties with a friend who now has political leanings that are abhorrent to me. I could have agreed to disagree or to refrain from talking about politics when we’re together, but I just can’t stand his values and his beliefs. Not to mention his air of arrogance. I guess being associated with the politically powerful has rubbed off on him.

I also remember sitting with another friend I knew since college. From our conversation, he was still keen about fast cars and other luxurious obsessions. He even brought me to the parking lot to show off his latest love, his hybrid car. I had to pretend to be impressed throughout. He never got to ask me about my present life and my family.

It can be a painful experience to try to keep maintaining a friendship when you feel drained, exhausted, or like you’re the one putting in all of the effort.

I no longer feel guilty about deliberately losing friends. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do to yourself is to cut the cord and release that friend, especially people who didn’t show up in your times of trouble.

Consider it as a positive sign that our attitude towards some friends is changing because that means we too have changed. We’re becoming more clear and selective on the kind of friends we want to spend our precious time with. Let’s face it. At 60 or 70, our time is limited.

As we release “friends” from our lives, and find ourselves released from their lives, we create space; space where more aligned people can enter our lives. Just like an overgrown tree, we need to cut off dead or unproductive branches to make room for new growths. This is a good time for us to review who are our true friends. Some friendships have stood the test of time and can still be considered sources of mutual enjoyment and growth.

But it can be hard to determine whether or not a friend is “toxic” especially when you know people are rarely entirely bad; most have positive sides as well. So, how do we decide if a friend is actually an enemy in disguise? What are the signs of a “toxic” friend?

The first characteristic is he/she is a taker. A good friendship, like a good marriage, must be a give-andtake relationship. But if he is continuously looking for something to get and uses friends as a means for that, then he is definitely a taker.

I have a friend who calls me from time to time to get me involved in some of the projects he is pursuing. But my wife viscerally hates him. When he calls me at home and my wife answers the phone, I will never get the end of it later. I try to mention the good opportunities he brings, but she doesn’t buy it. She says, “He is only interested in you, not me, not us. He’s friendly with you because, your skill is valuable to him. You’re not demanding when it comes to payment. He is just exploiting you.” Now I realize she was right all this time.

The taker, as a friend, isn’t much interested in the friendship itself but in what he can get out of it. As he is only out to receive, he rarely thinks about giving, so this is not a give and take friendship but consists of a parasite and a host, the former sucking the latter dry.

A variation of the taker is the “emotional drainer.” After talking to him, it feels like the air has been sucked out of the room. One friend who is a likely candidate to be cut off by me calls me from time to time only to pour out his feelings about the dismal state of his business, always saying he wants to give up because things aren’t going his way, in a tone of doom that makes me recall a line from a Beatle song:

“He’s so heavy.” Essentially he’s driven by wanting and grasping for comforting words, cheer-up words he expects to hear: go on and persevere and never lose hope, and so on.

Most of all, a red flag is a friend who has a “silver tongue.” He uses words as a tool to manipulate and get his way. If your friend has a mouthful of promises and excuses but shows very little action, this individual is ripe for pruning. When you call him for a little financial help, he would mouth empty words of kind concern, and then veer towards talking about his personal misfortune at the moment.

Glib and charming “friends” who offer us little more can be fun at times, but we shouldn’t consider them as friends of true value. Someone who always praises is simply feeding into your vanity, knowing that you’ll keep him around and trust him, as long as he tells you what you want to hear.

Who are the friends we should keep and new friends to cultivate?

The helper, the friend who stays true in good and bad times, the mentor, and the compassionate friend. These people are more likely to be calm, happy, helpful and wholesome individuals themselves. They help enrich our lives in many little ways and add something to the conversation, so to speak.

These are the kind of friendships that are for keeps. Forever, like a diamond.

Editor: Mike Policarpio