It all started like a play. But over a year after, the world has yet to fully recover from Covid-19 pandemic destruction. When the coronavirus broke out in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China at the end of 2019, no one could have predicted what was to come.
On March 11, the World Health Organisation declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, and encouraged strict adherence to protocols such as wearing of face masks, handwashing with soap, use of hand sensitisers, and social distancing. By December 2020, some pharmaceutical companies had developed and got the approval of their COVID-19 vaccines by health authorities.
A few weeks later, Johnson & Johnson received an emergency use authorisation from the FDA for its single-dose vaccine. On February 21, WHO stated that 110.7 million had been infected with the virus while over 2.4 million people had died. As of April 15, over 139 million cases were recorded, with nearly three million deaths.
Amid all these challenges, the World Health Organisation in March issued a warning about counterfeit and stolen COVID-19 vaccines being sold on the dark web. The WHO also alerted the public to a falsified vaccine detected in Mexico in February, which had been administered to patients outside of authorised vaccination programmes.
In March, the International Criminal Police Organisation, commonly known as Interpol, said it seized thousands of doses of counterfeit COVID-19 vaccine and made dozens of arrests. According to a court ruling, Kong and his team made a profit of $2.78m by putting saline solution or mineral water in syringes and hawking them as COVID-19 vaccines.
“Any vaccine being advertised on websites or the dark web, will not be legitimate, will not have been tested and may be dangerous,” it said. “All the vaccines given to the NPHCDA were through COVAX. The NPHCDA sent those vaccines to states, and the states have announced centres where those vaccines can be taken. All of the centres are government facilities. There are also measures put in place to know the batches of vaccines used in a day. This is to help trace the source of the vaccine should anyone report side effects after taking the vaccine.
The don stated that the risk of people patronising fake COVID-19 vaccines might be higher due to the shortage of vaccine supply.
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