Covid-19 Vaccine Scams Hit India as Country Struggles With Immunizations

NEW DELHI—One early morning in late May possibly, hundreds of men and women from an upscale housing complex in a Mumbai suburb lined up to obtain their to start with dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Unbeknown to them, they obtained a shot of saline answer.

Authorities say the scam was one of the greatest of many that have led to thousands of men and women obtaining faux vaccines in India. The global vaccine rollout has presented an opportunity for criminals, specially in the producing environment in which doses have been in brief offer.

In April, Pfizer Inc. claimed it experienced determined counterfeit variations of a vaccine it designed with BioNTech SE in Mexico and Poland. In South Africa very last yr, authorities observed 2,four hundred doses of illicit vaccines in a warehouse. Interpol claimed in March that it experienced determined a network linked to the bust and raided a lab in China in which they were being allegedly being developed.

Police in India have a short while ago designed arrests in Mumbai, New Delhi and Kolkata, charging men and women with seeking in different approaches to get benefit of sturdy need for Covid-19 vaccines.

The ripoffs are just the most recent cases of men and women in search of illicit gains all through the pandemic in India. During the Covid-19 surge in April and May possibly, many men and women experienced to fork out high price ranges for oxygen and antiviral drugs on the black market when they weren’t out there by licensed distributors. Authorities say the scarcities were being in portion caused by men and women hoarding and reselling on the black market. In early May possibly, for instance, as hospitals were being having difficulties to get oxygen materials, police in New Delhi raided a making and seized a lot more than four hundred oxygen concentrators.