The World Health Organisation had issued a warning about counterfeit and stolen COVID-19 vaccines being sold on the dark web.
“We urge the secure disposal or destruction of used and empty vaccine vials to prevent them from being reused by criminal groups,” said the WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The WHO also alerted the public to a falsified vaccine detected in Mexico in February, which had been administered to patients outside of authorised vaccination programmes.
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“Falsified COVID-19 vaccines pose a serious risk to global public health and place an additional burden on vulnerable populations and health systems. It is important to identify and remove these from circulation,” the WHO said.
The PUNCH gathered that the International Criminal Police Organisation, commonly known as Interpol, seized thousands of doses of counterfeit COVID-19 vaccine and made dozens of arrests.
Announcing the dismantling of the suspected fake vaccine network, Interpol stressed that no approved vaccines were currently available for sale online.
“Any vaccine being advertised on websites or the dark web, will not be legitimate, will not have been tested and may be dangerous,” it said.
Interpol Secretary-General, Jürgen Stock, said that while the police operations in China and South Africa were commendable, they were “only the tip of the iceberg” on issues related to COVID-19 vaccine-related crime.
Public health physician and member of the Vaccine Safety & Confidence Building Working Group, Prof Tanimola Akande, advised Nigerians to go to only designated government centres to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
He said this was the best strategy to avoid taking fake COVID-19 vaccines.
He said, “The deployment of vaccines by the National Primary Health Care Development Agency is such that people who follow protocol will not fall into the hands of those selling fake COVID-19 vaccines.
“All the vaccines given to the NPHCDA were through COVAX. The NPHCDA sent those vaccines to states, and the states have announced centres where those vaccines can be taken. All of the centres are government facilities. There are also measures put in place to know the batches of vaccines used in a day. This is to help trace the source of the vaccine should anyone report side effects after taking the vaccine.
“So if people take the vaccine from the designated government facilities, the tendency of taking fake vaccines is zero. No one should be desperate or cajoled into going outside government facilities to take the vaccine.”
However, Akande said it was unfortunate that “we have an environment for people to perpetrate evil by selling fake vaccines because they want to make money.”
“I think it’s people who are desperate and poorly informed that can fall into such hands. We may also have health workers who may claim they have the vaccines and be selling to unwary people,” he said.
In March, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control warned Nigerians against using fake COVID-19 vaccines because it could cause sicknesses similar to the illness caused by the coronavirus and that the results might be fatal.