E-DRUG: Medical Product Quality Report: COVID-19 issues // issue 3
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Dear colleagues,
The COVID-19 pandemic is accompanied by a multitude of reports of
substandard and falsified (SF) medical products, ranging from personal
protective equipment to diagnostic tests, medicines, and vaccines. In
response to this, we started a system for collecting, curating, and
visualizing information available in the public domain on quality concerns
related to COVID-19 medical products.
The Medical Product Quality Reports hold reports from scientific literature, public alerts/warnings, and lay press: https://www.iddo.org/mq/research/medical-product-quality-reports
The third issue, covering the month of August 2020 is available now and
shows 62 articles reporting on 72 different incidents/issues of SF products
from searches in Google News.
It is out at
https://www.iddo.org/external-publication/medical-product-quality-report-covid-19-issues-issue-3-august-2020-main-text.
In the USA there are several reports on propanol containing hand
sanitizers. We report on several alerts with masks labeled as 'Made in
Taiwan' that turn out to be falsified and manufactured in China.
Apart from Sputnik V, COVID-19 vaccines are not authorized yet, nevertheless, there are already reports of Chinese trial vaccines being available online. Urgent discussion is needed for optimizing risk-based surveillance to prevent, detect, and respond to the inevitable substandard and falsified vaccines.
Any remarks or additions to content are greatly appreciated (please write
to medicinequality@iddo.org). We would be delighted if you could
disseminate this information within your network.
Very best wishes,
Kerlijn Van Assche, Celine Caillet, Paul N Newton
Medicine Quality Research Group, Infectious Diseases Data Observatory
(IDDO) & Mahidol Oxford Research Unit (MORU), Centre for Tropical Medicine
& Global Health, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford,
Oxford, UK
Kerlijn Van Assche <kerlijn.vanassche@iddo.org>