"Saltwater vaccine" hits India's "anti-epidemic shield"
□ Chen Runze, our correspondent in Sri Lanka
Fearing that the epidemic will worsen, the Indian authorities are stepping up to vaccinate the people.
Recently, the Indian police cracked down on a criminal gang that injected the people with a "salt water vaccine."
The gang used a private hospital as a cover to forge the new crown vaccination certificate, refill the empty bottle of the new crown vaccine with saline to disguise it as a regular vaccine, and sell it at high prices for profit.
These fake vaccines have been injected to about 2,600 victims. Not only are they not conducive to India’s fight against the epidemic, but they may also impact the vaccination plan.
Yin Jingxian Saline Vaccine
According to foreign media reports, on July 5, Vishal Thakur, a senior officer of the Mumbai Police Department, stated that the authorities had found at least 12 cases of fake vaccines in and around Mumbai, the financial center of Maharashtra in western India. Vaccination activities.
"They used saline instead of the new crown vaccine to vaccinate the people at fake vaccination sites," Thakur said.
It is reported that this large-scale fake vaccination campaign took place from late May to early June.
Some victims of fake vaccinations have doubts about the vaccination certificates they have received and reported to the police. The relevant departments have launched an investigation on the matter.
At first, people who had received fake vaccines felt something wrong. For example, they found that the name of the vaccine was spelled incorrectly, or the name of the vaccine was not in the list of authorized vaccines announced by the government, and they did not receive an official SMS reminder of successful vaccination. .
One of the fake vaccinations was carried out in a housing association. One victim said, "Although we had some suspicions at the time, none of us had any symptoms and had to be paid in cash at the time."
A similar scam occurred in Kolkata, the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. More than 500 people were injected with a fake vaccine containing the antibiotic amikacin sulfate.
Medical experts say that if the vaccinated person suffers from kidney disease, these antibiotics can even be life-threatening.
According to the details of the case recently disclosed by New Delhi TV and "India Today", the well-known actor Chakra Poti, a member of the People’s House of the Indian Federal Assembly, was supposed to call himself an IAS official (Indian administrative service officer) in late June. "Invited to go to a vaccination spot in southern Kolkata as a demonstration to encourage people to get vaccinated.
But after completing the vaccination, he did not receive an official SMS notification, and Chakrapoti immediately called the police.
So far, the "De Bajan Dev" scam has been exposed, and this person has organized a number of fake vaccination campaigns in Kolkata before his arrest.
Police crack down on fake vaccines
According to reports, Indian police have arrested 14 people in the past two months. The suspects sold fake vaccines for 10 to 17 US dollars per dose for profit, and were confiscated 28,000 US dollars of illegal gains.
The police are still investigating other people involved in the case, and the number of arrests may further increase in the future.
Thakur stated that “the arrested were charged with conspiracy, fraud and forgery of documents, etc.”.
Among them are some doctors who participated in this scam. They used a private hospital to produce fake certificates, fake medicine bottles, and fake syringes to commit fraud.
This private hospital had previously obtained permission from the Indian government to vaccinate people, but it did not get permission to open vaccination points in residential areas.
Private hospitals hold large-scale vaccination campaigns in residential areas without authorization.
The police suspected that the hospital refilled the used vaccine packaging bottles and pretended to be newly arrived vaccines.
These vaccine packaging bottles should have been destroyed after use.
At present, the hospital involved has been sealed up.
As the police started investigating, others also took legal action.
According to CNN, on June 24, Mumbai lawyer Sidart Chandra Shekar filed a public interest lawsuit. At that time, the public prosecutor said that more than 2,000 victims of the scam have been identified. .
The Mumbai High Court wrote in the indictment that these allegations were “very shocking” and required the Maharashtra State and Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporations, where Mumbai is located, to take action to ensure that the fake vaccine incident will not recur in order to make the innocent. Of the people are no longer deceived.
Vaccination has a long way to go
A few days ago, India was hit hard by the second wave of the epidemic. At one point, there were more than 300,000 newly confirmed cases in a single day for more than 20 consecutive days.
The rapid increase in patient mortality and the large-scale outbreak of rare diseases such as mucormycosis have made the Indian people strongly willing to vaccinate against the new crown.
India did not announce free vaccination for adults over 18 years old until June 7 this year.
Previously, the Indian government only vaccinated the elderly and front-line medical staff for free, while adults aged 18 to 45 had to pay for the vaccine if they wanted to be vaccinated. This gave the "saline vaccine" an opportunity.
It is reported that in early June this year, Indian Prime Minister Modi announced a centralized vaccination plan, a large part of which will be provided by the Indian government to various regions free of charge.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University in the United States, so far, more than 62 million people (approximately 4.5% of the country's population) have been vaccinated in the country.
The Indian government plans to complete the vaccination for the whole country before the end of this year, but due to factors such as slow vaccination and shortage of doses, the plan is progressing hard.
In addition, India's production of the new crown vaccine is heavily dependent on 37 key raw materials from the United States. However, as early as April last year, the then US President Trump issued a decree banning the export of vaccine raw materials. This ban has continued to this day and has caused a great impact on the Indian vaccine production. Hinder.
The analysis believes that, based on the current Indian production capacity and the progress of imported vaccines, India may not be able to complete the task of full vaccination until 2023.
According to “Deutsche Welle”, Aswati, a lung disease expert at King George Medical University in India, said that India needs at least 130,000 to 140,000 vaccination centers and more than 100,000 health care professionals, but in reality it is far from enough. .
"It is not surprising that many Indians have fallen victim to vaccine fraud, and the middle class is also panicking."