As the global community is fast rejecting the COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by China, there has been a further significant embarrassment to the Communist Party of China. A fake Covid-19 vaccine racket has been busted where bottled saline water was being sold as COVID-19 vaccine, ABC News has reported.
As per the report, 3,000 doses of this fake COVID-19 vaccine have been confiscated and 80 individuals have been arrested in police raids in the cities of Beijing, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces. It is believed that this racket has been going on since September of last year.
The accused have been “making huge profits by filling saline solution into injectors to process and make fake coronavirus vaccines and selling them at a higher price”, reports said.
China has been vaccinating its populace using vaccines developed by Sinovac and Sinopharm. However, due to its low efficacy rate of just over 50 per cent, trials of this vaccine were halted in Brazil due to an adverse effect. Also, another South American country Peru had already suspended the ongoing clinical trials of a COVID-19 vaccine made by Chinese drug giant Sinopharm after detecting neurological problems in one of its test volunteers.
It must also be noted that China also supplied faulty test kits for many countries along with sub-standard Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) kits and in that process made billions of dollars off of the misery of many nations.
At the same time, India has been lauded for its efforts to provide vaccines to almost all its neighbouring nations, showing magnanimity and generosity. India’s “Vaccine Maitri” programme is gaining momentum and as the world’s largest vaccine-maker, many nations have approached India to help procure supplies to immunise their respective populations from the Wuhan virus.
India has already supplied to the COVID-19 vaccine to Bhutan, Maldives, Bangladesh, Brazil and now will be extending help to South Africa with the indigenously developed vaccine made by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and the Pune based National Institute of Virology.