While the world waits with bated breath for a vaccine to the deadly coronavirus, one man has given hopes of an early end to the worldwide pandemic and the grave health crisis that we are facing right now. Adar Poonawalla, the Chief Executive of the world's largest vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India and is among the six people named "Asians of the Year" by Singapore's leading daily, The Straits Times, for their significant contribution towards fighting the COVID19 pandemic.
The Serum Institute was founded by Poonawalla's father Cyrus Poonawalla, more than five decades ago, in 1966. Adar joined the Serum Institute of India in 2001 and became the CEO of Serum Institute in 2011 and started to significantly ramp up its manufacturing capabilities. In the current COVID19 pandemics, the Pune-based institute is collaborating with the University of Oxford in England and the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, to develop and produce the COVID-19 vaccine, ''Covidshield'', in India.
SII is currently conducting the third phase of human trials in India and hopes to have 100 million doses of this vaccine which will be given to patients in two doses—by January 2021. "I decided to go all out", Adar said regarding the production and developed of the life-saving vaccine and has already committed to making them available to the poor and vulnerable masses of low and middle-income nations which are at a significant disadvantage in vaccine availability.
Other than Adar Poonawalla, the Singapore daily has also named five others, including Chinese researcher Zhang Yongzhen, who led the team that mapped and published online the first complete genome of Sars-CoV-2 virus responsible for Covid, China's Major-General Chen Wei, Japan's Dr Ryuichi Morishita, and Singapore's Professor Ooi Eng Eong, and South Korean businessman Seo Jung-jin, whose company will enable the making and dispensing of the vaccines and other Covid-19 treatments to the world, as 'Asians of the Year'. These people are among those at the frontline fighting the virus by developing a vaccine and enabling means to distribute these to neutralize the harm that the COVID19 virus is spreading.
