Singapore: Adar Poonawalla, the chief executive of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India, is among the six people named “Asians of the Year” by The Straits Times, a leading daily newspaper of Singapore, for their work in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pune-based Serum Institute of India (SII) has collaborated with the University of Oxford and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca for making the COVID-19 vaccine, ”Covidshield”, and is conducting trials in India.
The other five named in the list are Chinese researcher Zhang Yongzhen, who led the team that mapped and published online the first complete genome of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that sparked the pandemic, China’s Major-General Chen Wei, Japan’s Dr Ryuichi Morishita and Singapore’s Professor Ooi Eng Eong, who are among those at the forefront of developing vaccines against the virus, and South Korean businessman Seo Jung-jin whose company will enable the making and…