NOVAVAX, INC. expects regulators in India, the Philippines and elsewhere to make a decision on its coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine within “weeks,” its chief executive told Reuters, after the shot on Monday received its first emergency use authorization (EUA) from Indonesia.
Novavax shares were up about 13% after the company also said it had filed an application for emergency use of the vaccine to Canada and the European Medicines Agency.
For Indonesia, the shot will be manufactured by the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, Serum Institute in India (SII), and sold under the Indian company’s brand name, Covovax. Novavax said initial shipments into Indonesia are expected to begin imminently.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is also reviewing Novavax’s regulatory filing and the US drugmaker expects that review to be resolved in the coming weeks, Chief Executive Stanley Erck told Reuters in a phone interview on Monday.
A green light from the WHO would set the stage for Novavax to begin shipping doses to the COVAX program that supplies shots to low-income countries. Novavax and SII have together committed to provide more than 1.1 billion doses to COVAX, which is co-led by the WHO.
“I think we’ll get some doses to COVAX this year,” Mr. Erck said. “But I think [Novavax is] going to really start being able to ship large quantity to COVAX in the first quarter” of 2022.
Mr. Erck said Novavax has resolved all of its manufacturing challenges and does not expect regulators to have any further concerns about its production processes.
He said Novavax is “in dialogue with the US FDA and … we expect a full submission within the next several weeks.”
Novavax had delayed filing for US approval, and Politico reported last month that the company faced production and quality problems.
SII is authorized to make the Novavax vaccine and the US company said it will apply for regulatory authorization for other facilities, such as its plant in the Czech Republic, in the coming weeks.
Indonesia is slated to receive 20 million doses of the protein-based vaccine this year, according to the government.
Penny Lukito, chief of the National Agency for Drug and Food Control of Indonesia, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Novavax has so far applied for EUA in various countries, including the UK, Australia, India and the Philippines.
“It will be weeks, not months, for them to review” Novavax’s regulatory submissions and potentially clear the shot for use, Mr. Erck said.
The company, along with Japanese partner Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., said on Friday it was preparing to seek regulatory approval for a rollout in Japan early next year.
The Novavax shot was shown to be more than 90% effective, including against a variety of concerning variants of the coronavirus in a large, late-stage US-based trial. — Carl O’Donnell and Dania Nadeem/Reuters
EDNA VIDA and Nonoy Froilan photographs and paintings presented in ‘Of Art and Wine: Duets’ at Conrad Manila
DANCERS and partners Edna Vida and Nonoy Froilan had been residing in a condominium with a good view of the Makati skyline since 2009. But it was not until the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) lockdown last year that Mr. Froilan found inspiration from its view of the outdoors. Ms. Vida, in turn, was inspired by the solitude of staying indoors. It was then that Mr. Froilan picked up a camera to shoot photographs of clouds from his window, while Ms. Vida started painting images of dance movements. They took up these new pursuits separately, with no exchange of ideas.
The photographs and paintings were eventually matched in pairs and are now presented in “Of Art and Wine: Duets”at Conrad Manila’s Gallery C. It is the couple’s first art exhibition together.
Ms. Vida and Mr. Froilan have worked together for years as principal dancers of Ballet Philippines, co-choreographers and re-stagers in many dance productions, actors in several plays at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), and collaborators in performance art projects.
“This art exhibit has been an exciting and challenging project for me to curate,” said Nestor O. Jardin during last week’s onsite and online launch. “Marrying two different visual art forms — painting and photography — was difficult enough, but working on two diverse subject matters such as dance and clouds proved to be another matter,” said Mr. Jardin, the former president of Ballet Philippines and the CCP, and a longtime friend of the couple.
“It took me several days to pour over hundreds of Edna’s paintings, and hundreds of Nonoy’s photographs, trying to see points of similarities and confluence in their artwork. But from the perspective of style and form, I finally saw some points of convergence [from which] was born the dramatic curatorial idea for ‘Duets’,” Mr. Jardin added.
INSPIRATION IN LOCKDOWN Mr. Froilan said that while at home during the lockdown, he appreciated the view of the skyline from the windows and noted what time boats would pass by — a routine he barely noticed for 11 years prior to lockdown due to his busy schedule. This is when Mr. Froilan picked up the camera to take photographs of cloud formations.
“It has the kind of surrounding like a dancer performing,” Mr. Froilan said of his chosen subject. “Whenever I take video and photographs, the best photos are where you are at the moment.”
Ms. Vida found solitude conducive to painting and most of the time finishing two works in a day during the long period indoors. Rekindling her painting practice, which she started in 1989, Ms. Vida found herself dancing with ink and on canvas.
“[Being] imprisoned in a state of obscurity is the best time to be an artist. And this pandemic’s proverbial box of rebirth and transformation, made us rekindle the child in us.” Ms. Vida said.
“The lockdowns changed me and Nonoy a lot. We were suddenly at home 24/7, and we went into our own space to do our own projects. Nonoy with this camera. And I on canvas,” she said.
A SEPARATE DUET Despite living under one roof, the couple worked separately and had no communication about each other’s output. It was only when the works were to be showcased that Mr. Jardin matched them and classified them into thematically.
The pairs, which Mr. Jardin described as “25 pas des deux” are classified using words of emotions and perceptions, movement and stillness, energy and tranquility. The pairs include Solace, referring to a dance centered on being alone; Quarantine, referring to a period of isolation; Boxed In referring to the shapes of the figures in both the photograph and painting.
Since dancing ballet has its strict rules and techniques, Ms. Vida found painting a more liberal art form.
“I get my inspiration from the fact that in the visual arts, everything is free; not like in dance in ballet… Ballet, particularly was so full of rules. It was very strict, and we had to follow a particular kind of technique to perform well on stage. But with painting, there are no rules — at least for me,” Ms. Vida said.
She also added that she can freely chose colors and make mistakes. “And sometimes, mistakes are the ones that are beautiful.”
As an artist, the pursuit of perfection comes with uncertainties.
“I have been performing at the Cultural Center of the Philippines for two decades. Every time we step on that stage, it was like walking on a tightrope. There were always doubts and uncertainties in our dancing,” Mr. Froilan admitted. “We have honed our dance skills for years, and even if we made mistakes, we never show[ed it]. We will not reach that perfection in art, but still we did [dance].
“I got that feeling when I was starting to do [photography again], but after a while, I got used to my camera, and the camera likes me. Because sometimes I would say, ‘The camera takes better photos than I’,” he added.
“But anyway, a good yardstick for success is whether people like our work well enough to hang it on the wall,” he said.
UNIONBANK of the Philippines, Inc. recorded a higher net profit in the first nine months of the year as earnings from its core businesses improved and as its loan loss provisions declined.
The Aboitiz-led lender’s net profit increased 26% year on year to P10.71 billion in the first nine months of 2021, based on its filing with the local bourse on Tuesday. Its previous financial report showed its net income in the same period of 2020 stood at P8.482 billion.
This translated to a return on equity of 13.6% as of end-September.
The bank’s net interest income in the January to September period went up by 3% year on year to P22 billion on improved margins. Its net interest margin rose to 4.6% from 4.5% a year earlier.
“Lower funding costs coming from the robust growth of our CASA (current account, savings account) deposits supported our margin growth,” the bank said in a statement.
Interest expense stood at P4.763 billion as of September, down 41% from the P8.082 billion a year earlier.
Meanwhile, the lender’s non-interest income climbed 22% to P12.6 billion in the first nine months, backed by better trading gains, foreign exchange income, as well as fees and commissions.
UnionBank’s loans declined 4% year on year to P341.5 billion at end-September amid muted demand for corporate credit.
The bank’s nonperforming loan ratio was at 4.9% as of September, improving from the 5.1% posted at end-2020.
Its provisions for credit losses decreased by 45% to P4.122 billion in the period from P7.458 billion a year ago.
On the funding side, deposit liabilities stood at P517.371 billion as of September. CASA deposits grew by 26% year on year to P318.3 billion.
The bank’s assets stood at P767.76 billion in the same period, inching up by 1.28% from P758.02 billion a year earlier.
DIGITAL INITIATIVES UnionBank said its registered users reached 3.6 million at end-September amid its digital onboarding initiatives. This was 2.4 times higher from a year earlier.
The lender added that they onboarded 180,000 micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises and channel partners across their platforms in the same period, increasing by 46% from a year earlier.
In July, UnionBank secured a digital bank license from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. It is set to launch Union Digital Bank by 2022.
UnionBank President and Chief Executive Officer Edwin R. Bautista expressed optimism for the bank’s performance as the economic situation improves.
“With our current momentum and the reopening of the economy, we are confident that the worst of the pandemic is behind us. We will be entering 2022 with a solid base from where we can resume our pre-pandemic growth trajectories,” Mr. Bautista was quoted as saying.
UnionBank shares closed at P90.60 apiece on Tuesday, up by five centavos or 0.06% from its previous finish. — L.W.T. Noble
CONVERGE ICT Solutions, Inc. Co-Founder and President Maria Grace Y. Uy is part of Forbes Asia’s 2021 Power Businesswomen list, which recognizes 20 outstanding female business leaders in the Asia-Pacific region.
Announced on Tuesday, Forbes Asia recognized Ms. Uy for her role in growing Converge “into one of the largest fixed broadband operators in the Philippines.”
“I have always lived with the principle that to be successful, you need to put in everything you’ve got and always work to do it better,” Ms. Uy told Forbes in a statement.
“And we still believe that we have just started,” she added.
Ms. Uy is a certified public accountant. She held senior executive positions in several companies, including IBM Philippines, prior to Converge, according to Forbes.
The businesswomen honored this year were selected for their accomplishments in managing either a business with sizable revenues or a startup valued at over $100 million, Forbes said in an e-mailed statement.
This year’s list recognizes businesswomen “who managed to adapt and thrive in industries including technology, healthcare, banking and manufacturing,” said Rana Wehbe Watson, editor of the 2021 Asia’s Power Businesswomen list.
“They are leading the way as the world struggles with the post-COVID reality,” she added.
Forbes noted that Ms. Uy led the negotiations for a $250-million investment from Warburg Pincus, a global growth investor, in 2019, which was used for the expansion of Converge’s fiber network.
Last year, Ms. Uy and her husband, Converge Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Dennis Anthony H. Uy, raised $522 million in one of the Philippines’ “largest-ever” initial public offerings, Forbes said.
“Shares have since risen over 70%, pushing Converge’s market cap to 233 billion pesos ($4.6 billion),” it added.
Other businesswomen on the list include Thailand’s Wallapa Traisorat, president and chief executive officer of real estate company Asset World Corp.; Helen Wong, the first woman to helm the 89-year-old Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.; South Korea’s Lee In-kyung who became a partner at MBK Partners (one of the largest homegrown buyout firms in Asia) last year; and Meena Ganesh who co-founded Portea Medical, India’s largest home healthcare company by revenue. — Arjay L. Balinbin
ART historians have long used traditional X-rays, X-ray fluorescence or infrared imaging to better understand artists’ techniques. — METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
ART historians have long used traditional X-rays, X-ray fluorescence or infrared imaging to better understand artists’ techniques. — METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
PEOPLE tend to rejoice in the disclosure of a secret.
Or, at the very least, media outlets have come to realize that news of “mysteries solved” and “hidden treasures revealed” generate traffic and clicks.
So I’m never surprised when I see AI-assisted revelations about famous masters’ works of art go viral.
As an art historian, I’ve become increasingly concerned about the coverage and circulation of these projects.
They have not, in actuality, revealed one secret or solved a single mystery.
What they have done is generate feel-good stories about AI.
ARE WE ACTUALLY LEARNING ANYTHING NEW? Take the reports about the Modigliani and Picasso paintings.
These were projects executed by the same company, Oxia Palus, which was founded not by art historians but by doctoral students in machine learning.
In both cases, Oxia Palus relied upon traditional X-rays, X-ray fluorescence, and infrared imaging that had already been carried out and publishedyears prior — work that had revealed preliminary paintings beneath the visible layer on the artists’ canvases.
The company edited these X-rays and reconstituted them as new works of art by applying a technique called “neural style transfer.” This is a sophisticated-sounding term for a program that breaks works of art down into extremely small units, extrapolates a style from them and then promises to recreate images of other content in that same style.
Essentially, Oxia Palus stitches new works out of what the machine can learn from the existing X-ray images and other paintings by the same artist.
But outside of flexing the prowess of AI, is there any value — artistically, historically — to what the company is doing?
These recreations don’t teach us anything we didn’t know about the artists and their methods.
Artists paint over their works all the time. It’s so common that art historians and conservators have a word for it: pentimento. None of these earlier compositions was an Easter egg deposited in the painting for later researchers to discover. The original X-ray images were certainly valuable in that they offered insights into artists’ working methods.
But to me, what these programs are doing isn’t exactly newsworthy from the perspective of art history.
THE HUMANITIES ON LIFE SUPPORT So, when I do see these reproductions attracting media attention, it strikes me as soft diplomacy for AI, showcasing a “cultured” application of the technology at a time when skepticism of its deceptions, biases and abuses is on the rise.
These studies and projects also seem to promote the idea that computer scientists are more adept at historical research than art historians.
For years, university humanities departments have been gradually squeezed of funding, with more money funneled into the sciences. With their claims to objectivity and empirically provable results, the sciences tend to command greater respect from funding bodies and the public, which offers an incentive to scholars in the humanities to adopt computational methods.
Art historian Claire Bishop criticized this development, noting that when computer science becomes integrated in the humanities, “theoretical problems are steamrollered flat by the weight of data,” which generates deeply simplistic results.
At their core, art historians study the ways in which art can offer insights into how people once saw the world. They explore how works of art shaped the worlds in which they were made and would go on to influence future generations.
A computer algorithm cannot perform these functions.
However, some scholars and institutions have allowed themselves to be subsumed by the sciences, adopting their methods and partnering with them in sponsored projects.
Literary critic Barbara Herrnstein Smith has warned about ceding too much ground to the sciences. In her view, the sciences and the humanities are not the polar opposites they are often publicly portrayed to be. But this portrayal has been to the benefit of the sciences, prized for their supposed clarity and utility over the humanities’ alleged obscurity and uselessness. At the same time, she has suggested that hybrid fields of study that fuse the arts with the sciences may lead to breakthroughs that wouldn’t have been possible had each existed as a siloed discipline.
I’m skeptical. Not because I doubt the utility of expanding and diversifying our toolbox; to be sure, some scholars working in the digital humanities have taken up computational methods with subtlety and historical awareness to add nuance to or overturn entrenched narratives.
But my lingering suspicion emerges from an awareness of how public support for the sciences and disparagement of the humanities means that, in the endeavor to gain funding and acceptance, the humanities will lose what makes them vital. The field’s sensitivity to historical particularity and cultural difference makes the application of the same code to widely diverse artifacts utterly illogical.
How absurd to think that black-and-white photographs from 100 years ago would produce colors in the same way that digital photographs do now. And yet, this is exactly what AI-assisted colorization does.
That particular example might sound like a small qualm, sure. But this effort to “bring events back to life” routinely mistakes representations for reality. Adding color does not show things as they were but recreates what is already a recreation — a photograph — in our own image, now with computer science’s seal of approval.
ART AS A TOY IN THE SANDBOX OF SCIENTISTS Near the conclusion of a recent paper devoted to the use of AI to disentangle X-ray images of Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, the mathematicians and engineers who authored it refer to their method as relying upon “choosing ‘the best of all possible worlds’ (borrowing Voltaire’s words) by taking the first output of two separate runs, differing only in the ordering of the inputs.”
Perhaps if they had familiarized themselves with the humanities more they would know how satirically those words were meant when Voltaire used them to mock a philosopher who believed that rampant suffering and injustice were all part of God’s plan — that the world as it was represented the best we could hope for.
Maybe this “gotcha” is cheap. But it illustrates the problem of art and history becoming toys in the sandboxes of scientists with no training in the humanities.
If nothing else, my hope is that journalists and critics who report on these developments will cast a more skeptical eye on them and alter their framing.
In my view, rather than lionizing these studies as heroic achievements, those responsible for conveying their results to the public should see them as opportunities to question what the computational sciences are doing when they appropriate the study of art. And they should ask whether any of this is for the good of anyone or anything but AI, its most zealous proponents, and those who profit from it.
Sonja Drimmer is an Associate Professor of Medieval Art, University of Massachusetts Amherst
THE more Filipinas perform early breast cancer detection, the higher the survival rate of the disease in the country will be.
At age 20, females are advised to learn and perform a breast self-exam (BSE) monthly. At age 30, an annual clinical breast exam by a doctor or a trained healthcare worker is recommended in conjunction with the monthly BSEs. At age 40, a low-dose X-ray of the breast called a mammogram is ideally added to the early detection equation.
“I can’t stress enough the importance of having a mammogram,” said Dr. Leya Suzette Evangelista- Espino, a radiologist from The Medical City, in an Oct. 30 webinar organized by the hospital. “A mammogram has the advantage of detecting breast cancer at the earliest stages. Even lumps that can’t be palpated can be detected in a mammogram,” she added in the vernacular.
The general symptoms of breast cancer are a lump or thickening of the breast; an alteration in the appearance of the breast; a dimpling in the skin of the breast, including the area surrounding the nipple; and/or a discharge in the nipple.
A survey published this October by Milieu Insight, a Singapore-based consumer data and analytics company, found that while 81% of Filipinas say they are familiar with breast cancer symptoms, less than half (or 45%) aged 30 years and above know the recommended frequency of a BSE. Only one-fifth (or 22%) of the same age group also know the recommended age for regular mammogram screening.
Inasmuch as screening tests are an important tool for finding breast changes that could be cancer before physical symptoms develop, no one test is infallible.
Menstruating women can have prominent fibroglandular breast tissue, and these dense areas of the breast make lesions harder to find in a mammogram, Dr. Espino told the webinar audience.
“[For these cases], it is usually advised to also have a breast ultrasound,” she said, noting that the ancillary procedure can tell whether a breast lump that was seen in a mammogram is fluid-filled or a solid tumor.
Dr. Espino added that a breast ultrasound is advisable for pregnant women as well, since it does not use radiation and is thus safe for the fetus.
Individuals with persistent abnormalities (or those that last more than a month) or patterns that suggest malignancy (such as calcium deposits called calcifications) may be advised to undergo further workups such as an ultrasound-guided needle biopsy of the breast.
This procedure entails administration of local anesthesia and an incision of around .2–.3 cm to insert the said needle, said Dr. Lea Angela Pineda-Peralta, a breast surgeon from The Medical City.
“We see the needle target the specific lump, and this avoids false negative results,” she said in the vernacular. The guided visualization also protects those with lumps close to the chest wall from having the needle prick an area outside of the lump, Dr. Pineda added. “We need to have the biopsy done so we can figure out how to help you.”
How to perform a breast self-exam
ICanServe Foundation, Inc., an early breast cancer detection advocacy group, outlines the steps to performing a breast self-exam:
Lie down with your back resting on a flat, comfortable surface. Raise your left arm and put a pillow or rolled towel below your left shoulder.
Use the three middle fingers of your right hand to feel for lumps, making sure they are pressed together. Use the convex of these three fingers together (not the fingertips) to feel for lumps.
Keep your fingers straight and press them together on your left breast.
Using vertical movements, begin from armpits and move fingers downward until below the breast. Move toward the middle and back up. Repeat through the chest and entire breast.
SOLAR PHILIPPINES wants to go public to help fund a 500-megawatt solar farm in Nueva Ecija. — SOLARPHILIPPINES.PH
SOLAR PHILIPPINES plans to hold an initial public offering (IPO) to raise a minimum of P1.3 billion, which will partly fund the construction of its unit’s 500-megawatt (MW) solar farm in Peñaranda, Nueva Ecija.
“We aim to raise at least P1.3 billion to fund the equity for the construction of the project’s first 225 MW, with the possibility of raising more to advance the expansion of the project,” Solar Philippines Founder Leandro L. Leviste told BusinessWorld through the firm’s corporate communications division in an e-mail on Tuesday.
The planned facility will be a project of Solar Philippines Nueva Ecija Corp., which is wholly owned by Solar Philippines.
Once completed, the solar farm will become Southeast Asia’s largest solar project to date, the company said.
“We’ve decided to make Solar Philippines Nueva Ecija our group’s first venture into the public markets because this is the asset that we are proudest to showcase: a site where will rise the largest solar project in the Philippines, with potential for further expansion given its proximity to Manila,” said Mr. Leviste separately said in an e-mailed statement on Tuesday.
The IPO will allow the public to invest in renewable energy efforts, and expand such initiatives in the Philippines, he said, adding that they will disclose the timing of the offer once it is firmed up.
Solar Philippines seeks to list the offer under the stock exchange’s supplemental listing and disclosure requirements for renewable energy companies.
The guidelines give development-stage project firms a chance to list on the local bourse as long as they fulfill certain requirements, such as securing a valid and subsisting service contract from the Energy department.
Solar Philippines said its Nueva Ecija unit aims to begin construction work for its 500-MW project by end-2021. The facility will help augment the Luzon grid’s reserve capacity and avoid rotating outages in the area.
Once operational, the Peñaranda solar farm will account for half of Solar Philippines’ first 1 gigawatt target.
Last month, Solar Philippines announced the creation of a new business called “Solar Energy Zones, Inc.” which aims to develop areas conducive to hosting solar facilities for power firms.
The company has said it was in the middle of finalizing deals to develop 10,000 hectares of solar energy zones, which will be mainly situated near its existing power projects in Nueva Ecija, Batangas and Tarlac. — Angelica Y. Yang with inputs from Keren Concepcion G. Valmonte
NONSTOCK SAVINGS and loan associations (NSSLAs) recorded a higher operating income in the first semester of the year as more loans were disbursed, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said.
In its Report on Philippine Financial System for the First Semester of 2021, the BSP said the total operating income of NSSLAs increased 5.8% year on year to P14.2 billion from the P13.4 billion seen in the January to June period in 2020.
The NSSLA industry’s return on assets declined to 6.8% as of end-June from 8.8% a year earlier, while return on equity fell to 10.5% from 13.5%. This, as equity and asset growth outpaced the increase in its earnings.
The industry’s core earnings were mainly driven by interest from lending activities, which stood at P15.4 billion as of June, increasing by 6.4% from P14.5 billion a year earlier.
Total assets held by NSSLAs saw a muted growth of 1.4% to P270 billion as of end-June as more funds channeled to lending and investment activities and sourced from members’ capital and deposits.
The NSSLA industry’s total loan portfolio, net of allowance for credit losses, made up the largest share of its assets at 81%, which was equivalent to P218.8 billion, the BSP said in the report.
Meanwhile, their nonperforming loan ratio (NPL) and nonperforming asset (NPA) ratio increased to 7.7% and 6.4% as of end-June, respectively. NPL and NPA coverage ratios for the same period were at 119.2% and 118.5%, respectively.
“Loan quality has remained manageable in spite of uptick in non-performing loans. The increase in bad loans was matched with high loan-loss provisions,” the BSP said.
The BSP in April released Circular No. 1115 Series of 2021, which streamlined the duties, responsibilities and qualifications of members of NSSLAs’ board of trustees, officials, and employees.
“The BSP will continue working on other policy enhancements involving NSSLAs, including those related to well defined group and compensation regulations,” the central bank said. — L.W.T. Noble
Heirloom showcases dance performances in online concert
HEIRLOOM, an online mini dance concert, celebrates the bond between creative dancers and the interconnections of art and dance as a passed-on heritage, on Nov. 6. The virtual showcase features a series of special performances with the goal of inspiring the next generation. They reveal the motivation, creative process, and meaning behind their respective pieces. Produced by Benilde Experimental Dance Company (BED) of the De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde, Heirloom was organized by the graduating batch of the Dance Program under the guidance of BED Artistic Director Christine Crame and Dance Program Chairperson Nina Anonas. The show hosts numbers from budding dance students Marie Erika Grace Arandez, Daniella Bondoc, Michaella Carreon, Florencio De Guzman IV, Stella Mee Estriber, Eduardson Evangelio, Emmerson Evangelio, Michelle Katherine Miranda and Rochelle Marian Santiano. Guest artists include Ronelson Yadao, Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Professional Dance Support Program grantee, choreographer, and modern dance ballet master; and Denise Parungao-Phillips, Luva Adameit Awardee at the National Music Competition for Young Artists (NAMCYA) and Ballet Philippines principal dancer. Completing the roster are Carlos Serrano III, Team Elite director and Team Package Makers 2020 Choreographer of the Year; Monica Gana, CCP Dance Workshop artist and educator; and Elijah Mendoza, professional performer and creative collaborator. Heirloom is open to the public and will go live on Nov. 6 at 5 p.m. Tickets are available at P150 each. Register at https://forms.gle/B6RNm4ELtWQTQBkV8.For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/BenildeExDance.
Literature webinar on women authors
ON THE occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of Italian writer and Nobel Prize Winner, Grazia Deledda, the Embassy of Italy in Manila, the National Library of the Philippines, the Philippine Italian Association, the Ateneo de Manila University, and the Italian Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines, are hosting a literature webinar on Grazia Deledda, from Sardinia, Italy, and Madgalena Jalandoni, from Iloilo, Philippines. The webinar, titled “Women Writing on the Margins,” will focus on the lives and works of the two women writers and parallels on the main themes that cross their works: women and society, self and country, identity and traditions, language and history, center and the margins. It will be held on Nov. 22, at 3:30 p.m. (Manila time), and will feature two presentations by Stefania Lucamante, Professor of Italian Contemporary Literature at the University of Cagliari, in Sardinia, and Alice Gonzalez, award-winning fictionist and faculty member at UP Visayas, followed by an open forum moderated by the Ateneo Institute of Literary Arts and Practices. To register, visit https://bit.ly/NLPPIAWWM.
Artbooks.ph accepting consignments
ARTBOOKS.PH is accepting consignments for art, culture, and history-related books, zines, postcards, posters (old and new) from non-publishers. Artbooks will assist in selling the titles online at their physical store at Pioneer Studios, 123 Pioneer St., Mandaluyong City. For inquiries and details, visit artbooks.ph | Facebook, contact 8632-7683, or e-mail infor@artbook.ph.
Artist dedicates art series to a lost loved one
ARTIST Ed Lorenzo’s recent work collection is a celebration of the life of a lost loved one and the sweet sorrow that fuels his passion moving forward. Mr. Lorenzo stopped creating art for two years after he lost his father in 2019, followed by the death of his closest brother due to an autoimmune disease in 2020. These events led Mr. Lorenzo to put everything away and shelve all his works. Recently, he found the courage to continue making art. “‘Di Magmaliw,” the name of his series, is a Tagalog term that means “not to forget.”Using colors that are sometimes monochromatic, analogous, or complementary, Mr. Lorenzo accentuates his works with a mix of other mediums to depict flow and movement matched with concentric circles and round textures in gold and bronze. To order a customized piece, contact Ed Lorenzo on Instagram at @thelorenzosart or e-mail at lorenzosart@icloud.com.
Vaccine makers must follow very strict scientific and health authority processes to bring a new vaccine to the public, even during the current pandemic.
With vaccine development moving so quickly, it is understandable that some people are asking whether a vaccine for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) will be safe and effective.
The people working on the research and development and manufacturing of vaccines are strongly committed to rigorous regulatory standards for approval of COVID-19 vaccines.
No matter how urgently action is needed against the coronavirus public health emergency, it is imperative that the highest standards of quality, safety, and efficacy are upheld everywhere.
They are also fully committed to transparency in reporting clinical trial results. They likewise support the need to inform the public of what they know, as well as what they don’t know about the vaccines in development.
These points were emphasized by Thomas B. Cueni, Director General of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations (IFPMA), the global body that represents the research-based pharma industry.
“We must prioritize thorough validation of the results of pre-clinical and clinical trials by independent expert bodies. Only the most rigorous application of science and openness in the regulatory process can ensure that everyone, starting with healthcare workers, has confidence in COVID-19 vaccines once they have been properly approved,” he said.
IMPORTANCE OF CLINICAL TRIALS As the foremost representative of the global research-based medicines and vaccines industry, the IFPMA provided information on how we know COVID-19 vaccines are effective and work well to prevent the virus.
It explained that Phase 3 clinical trials are the last and largest phase of vaccine testing before authorization or approval. These trials test how effective a vaccine is at preventing COVID-19 and are being conducted with tens of thousands of volunteers around the world.
During Phase 3, some volunteers get a COVID-19 vaccine and some get a placebo, a harmless injection with no active drug or treatment, for example, like normal saline.
To learn how effective a vaccine is at preventing a specific disease, researchers assess the vaccine efficacy rate which compares (a) the number of volunteers who got COVID-19 after getting the vaccine being studied; and (b) the number of volunteers who got COVID-19 after getting a placebo.
Thousands of people have volunteered to take part in different COVID-19 Phase 3 trials around the world. Some of these trials reported vaccine efficacy rates of over 90%.
All of the authorized COVID-19 vaccines go beyond the Food and Drug Administration’s minimum efficacy level of 50%.
This means that the FDA would not authorize a vaccine unless it prevented COVID-19 or lessened its severity in at least 5 out of 10 (50%) of people who got the vaccine. After a vaccine is authorized, health authorities continue to monitor its safety and effectiveness.
PROTECTION: HOW SOON, HOW LONG? After receiving a vaccine, your body’s immune system needs a little time to learn how to detect and fight the virus. This maturation of the immune system can vary but is usually around a few weeks. Each authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccine has different speeds for how quickly it protects you. The speed of response can depend on factors such as the dosing schedules or the number of doses.
Based on clinical trial data of the currently authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccines, optimal protection is reached within a few weeks of vaccination. For two-dose vaccines, some early protection is achieved after the first dose.
It is too early to know how long COVID-19 vaccines will provide long-term protection. More research is needed to answer this question.
The currently available data suggest that most people who recover from COVID-19 infection develop an immune response that provides at least some protection against reinfection (getting it again) — this is called natural immunity. We’re still learning how strong this natural immunity may be, and how long it lasts.
Health authorities will continue to monitor the clinical trial volunteers for many months to check how long they are protected. Both natural immunity and immunity from a vaccine are important aspects of COVID-19 that experts are trying to learn more about.
AFTER THE JAB, CAN YOU STILL GET COVID-19? Maybe. Clinical trials have shown that COVID-19 vaccines significantly lower the chance a person will have symptoms, including hospitalizations and severe symptoms.
However, none of the COVID-19 vaccines tested so far have been 100% effective at preventing COVID-19. So, some people who get the vaccine may still get the virus.
Furthermore, we still do not know if the vaccines will prevent someone who is infected (but doesn’t have symptoms) from spreading COVID-19 to others.
Research tends to show that a vaccinated person is less likely to spread COVID-19 to those who are more vulnerable (have a higher risk of severe COVID-19 infection), similar to what happens with vaccines for other respiratory infectious diseases such as influenza.
This is why it remains important to wash your hands, practice social distancing, and wear a mask even after you get vaccinated.
Teodoro B. Padilla is the executive director of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP), which represents the biopharmaceutical medicines and vaccines industry in the country. Its members are at the forefront of research and development efforts for COVID-19 and other diseases that affect Filipinos.
AYALALAND Logistics Holdings Corp.’s (ALLHC) consolidated net income surged by 117% to P402 million in the first nine months of the year on the back of strong domestic demand for industrial lots.
ALLHC’s topline amounted to P2.6 billion at end-September, 12% higher than the P2.3 billion logged in the same period last year. Revenues from the company’s industrial lot sales jumped 126% to P1.1 billion from last year’s P511 million.
Clients taking up the gross leasable area of the warehouses ALLHC completed last year led to a 6% increase in warehouse leasing to P299 million from the P282 million logged in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, ALLHC said revenues from commercial leasing operations continued to decline due to the pandemic restrictions and as the company continued to provide rental assistance to its tenants.
For the nine-month period, rentals from Tutuban Center and South Park Center declined by 16% to P311 million from P369 million. The company said South Park Corporate Center’s office leasing operations, which posted a 100% lease-out rate, is “cushioning the impact.”
Tutuban Center forayed into the digital space via Tutubuy, which serves as an online business platform for the small, medium, and emerging enterprises based in the Divisoria mall.
ALLHC said it also recently reopened the Tutuban Night Market, hosting over 400 stalls from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m.
“We see signs of recovery in our business lines with industrial lot sales driving significant improvement in our overall performance this quarter,” ALLHC President and Chief Executive Officer Maria Rowena M. Tomeldan said in a statement on Tuesday.
“While the current business environment still proves to be challenging, we trust that our growing diversified portfolio of assets will keep ALLHC resilient amidst the ongoing crisis,” Ms. Tomeldan said.
ALLHC, a unit of Ayala Land, Inc., focuses on real estate logistics and industrial estate development.
The company is present in five areas across the country via its businesses in industrial parks, warehouses, cold storage facilities, and commercial leasing.
Shares of ALLHC at the local bourse went up by 1.72% or 10 centavos on Tuesday to finish at P5.90 apiece. — K.C.G. Valmonte
A VIEW of the city skyline in Singapore, Dec. 31, 2020 — REUTERS
SINGAPORE is seeking to cement itself as a key player for cryptocurrency-related businesses as financial centers around the world grapple with approaches to handle one of the fastest growing areas of finance.
“We think the best approach is not to clamp down or ban these things,” said Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which regulates banks and financial firms.
Instead, MAS is putting in place “strong regulation,” so firms that meet its requirements and address the multitude of risks can operate, he said in an interview.
Nations differ vastly when it comes to how they handle crypto: China has cracked down on large amounts of activity in recent months, Japan only recently allowed dedicated crypto investment funds — though El Salvador has embraced Bitcoin as legal tender. In the US, while there are an abundance of options for investing in the burgeoning asset class, regulators are concerned about everything from stablecoins to yield-generating products.
“With crypto-based activities, it is basically an investment in a prospective future, the shape of which is not clear at this point,” said Mr. Menon, who has helmed the MAS for about a decade. “But not to get into this game, I think risks Singapore being left behind. Getting early into that game means we can have a head start, and better understand its potential benefits as well as its risks.”
The stakes are high for the small island nation, which has already earned a reputation as a global wealth hub. Singapore must raise its safeguards to counter risks including illicit flows, Mr. Menon said.
The city state is “interested in developing crypto technology, understanding blockchain, smart contracts and preparing ourselves for a Web 3.0 world,” he said, referring to the third generation of online services.
Singapore isn’t the only place with crypto ambitions. Locations as diverse as Miami, El Salvador, Malta and Zug in Switzerland, are also making efforts. It can be a fine line to tread, given the crypto industry grew up with few regulations, so many players balk at government officials’ attempts to impose guardrails.
BINANCE, GEMINI Singapore’s approach has attracted crypto firms from Binance Holdings Ltd., which has had a series of run-ins with regulators around the world, to Gemini, a US operator targeting institutional investors, to set up base.
Some 170 companies applied for a MAS license, taking the total number of firms seeking to operate under its Payment Services Act to about 400, after the law came into effect in January 2020.
Since then, only three crypto firms have received the much-coveted licenses, while two were rejected. About 30 withdrew their application after engaging with the regulator. Among those approved is the brokerage arm of DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Singapore’s largest bank, which is also a pioneer in setting up a platform for trading of digital tokens while offering tokenization services.
The regulator is taking time to assess applicants to ensure that they meet its high requirements, Mr. Menon said. The MAS has also boosted resources to cope with high volumes of prospective services operators, he said.
“We don’t need 160 of them to set up shop here. Half of them can do so, but with very high standards, that I think is a better outcome,” he said.
Mr. Menon said the benefits of having a well-regulated local crypto industry could also extend beyond the financial sector.
“If and when a crypto economy takes off in a way, we want to be one of the leading players,” he said. “It could help create jobs, create value-add, and I think more than the financial sector, the other sectors of the economy will potentially gain.” — Bloomberg
