US President-elect Joe Biden and his Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were named "Person of the Year" by Time magazine on Thursday evening.

The victors of the 2020 presidential election were picked from finalists who included frontline health care workers and the renowned infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci, the racial justice movement, and President Donald Trump.

"Every elected president since FDR has been 'Person of the Year' at some point during their term. This is the first time we have also named a vice president as 'Person of the Year,'" said Time Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal.

"The Biden-Harris ticket represents something historic," he said. "Person of the Year is not just about the year that was, but about where we're headed."

"The Democratic ticket was an unlikely partnership: forged in conflict and fused over Zoom, divided by generation, race, and gender," the US publication said.

"They come from different coasts, different ideologies, different Americas. But they also have much in common, says Biden: working-class backgrounds, blended families, shared values," the Time magazine wrote.

Biden won the presidency by getting a record number of votes in an election that saw the highest turnout in any US election. Kamala Harris is set to become the first female, the first Black, and the first Asian-American vice president of the US.

Last year, the influential US magazine named teen climate activist Greta Thunberg as the 'Person of the Year,' while Trump won in 2016.

Time Magazine has named a 'Person of the Year' annually since 1929. The title goes to figures who have had the greatest impact on the world over the past year.

'Guardians of the Year'

The magazine on Thursday also named Anthony Fauci and frontline health care workers as 'Guardians of the Year' for the role they played in the handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The publication honored health care workers around the world, who "displayed the best of humanity—selflessness, compassion, stamina, courage—while protecting as much of it as they could."

"By risking their lives every day for the strangers who arrived at their workplace, they made conspicuous a foundational principle of both medicine and democracy: equality," the magazine wrote.