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 in other countries.
Police in Beijing and Jiangsu and Shandong provinces broke up the group led by a Kong-named suspect who produced the fake vaccines, which consisted of a simple saline solution, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The vaccines were sold in China and other countries, although it was unclear which ones. The group has been active since last September, according to state media.
“China has already reported the situation to relevant countries,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Tuesday.
“The Chinese government highly values the safety of vaccines and will continue to strive to strictly prosecute any 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 relevant countries, to seriously prevent the spread of such illegal and criminal actions,” he said.
China has a long history of vaccine scandals stemming from manufacturing problems and trade practices. In 2016, police arrested two people who were at the head of a ring that sold millions of improperly stored vaccines across the country.
In response to recent scandals, China reformed vaccine safety rules and increased criminal penalties for people caught committing counterfeits.
Nationally, many Chinese citizens did not trust self-produced vaccines and previous surveys showed that confidence in vaccines fell after scandals like the one in 2016. However, since the pandemic has arrived, trust has been elevated. 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 were available.
China has at least seven COVID-19 vaccines in the latest stage of clinical trials and has one that has been approved for domestic use, manufactured by state-owned Sinopharm.
Chinese vaccine manufacturers have taken the opportunity offered by the pandemic to become global, with Sinopharm and other Chinese companies making deals or giving their vaccines in at least 27 countries around the world.
Nationally, China has administered more than 24 million doses of its own-produced vaccine candidates, as part of a mass vaccination campaign. So far it has refrained from giving the vaccine to older people, instead of targeting key groups such as medical workers and workers working in food-related industries, as well as adults between the ages of 18 and 59 years old.
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Associated Press researcher Liu Zheng in Beijing contributed to this report.