E-RUG: Medical Product Quality Report: COVID-19 issues // Issue 6 - November
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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 (PPE) 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 sixth issue, covering the month of November 2020 is available now and
reports 35 different incidents of SF medical products from searches in
Google News.
It is out at
https://www.iddo.org/document/medical-product-quality-report-covid-19-issues-issue-6-november-2020-main-text-plus
The number of PPE incidents has decreased compared to the early months of
the pandemic. However new incidents continue. Several warning letters were
contaminated hand sanitisers into the United States.
Even before the emergency use authorization of Regeneron's monoclonal antibody therapy, in the USA, the dark web was allegedly selling the product.
Similarly, the Australian National University found 22 COVID-19 vaccines sold on the dark web. We remain very concerned of the global risk of substandard and falsified COVID-19 vaccines and urge much more international coordination to mitigate this risk.
If you are interested in the challenges of SF COVID-19 vaccines, please
have a look at our Medicine Quality Monitoring Globe:
https://www.iddo.org/medicine-quality-monitoring-globe
This online tool holds many articles from the lay press discussing the issue (filter on 'COVID-19 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>