TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) – Chinese police have arrested more than 80 suspected members of a criminal group that manufactured and sold counterfeit COVID-19 vaccines, including to other countries.
The official Xinhua News Agency reports that police in Beijing and in Jiangsu and Shandong provinces have broken up the group led by a suspect named Kong, who manufactures the fake vaccines.
The vaccines were sold in China and to other countries, although this was unclear. According to state media, the group has been active since last year in September.
“China has already reported the situation to the countries concerned,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said during a daily briefing on Tuesday.
“The Chinese government is very valuable to the safety of vaccines and will continue to make efforts to strictly prosecute counterfeiting, counterfeiting and illegal business and other related actions involving vaccines,” Wang said. “At the same time, China will strengthen our law enforcement cooperation with the countries involved to seriously prevent the spread of this type of illegal and criminal activity.” He did not provide further details.
China has a long history of vaccine scandals due to manufacturing problems as well as business practices. In 2016, police arrested two people responsible for a ring that sold millions of vaccines across the country.
In response to recent scandals, China has reformed vaccine safety regulations and increased criminal fines for counterfeiters.
Domestically, many Chinese citizens did not trust trusted vaccines and surveys earlier showed that confidence in vaccines fell after scandals such as those in 2016. As the pandemic struck, confidence was high. A total of 74% of respondents in a recent survey published in the Chinese business magazine Caixin said they would take a COVID-19 vaccine if it was available.
China has at least seven COVID-19 vaccines in the final phase of clinical trials, and has one approved for domestic use, made by state-owned Sinopharm.
Chinese vaccine manufacturers have seized the opportunity offered by the pandemic to go worldwide, with Sinopharm and other Chinese companies trading or donating their vaccines in at least 27 countries around the world.
Inland, China has given more than 24 million doses of its own vaccination candidates as part of a mass vaccination campaign. It has so far refrained from giving the vaccine to the elderly, but rather to key groups such as medical workers and workers working in food-related industries, as well as adults between 18 and 59 years of age.
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Associated Press researcher Liu Zheng in Beijing contributed to this report.