As COVID-19-related illness and death rates mount globally against the backdrop of an increasingly desperate search for a cure, the United Nations is reporting that the illegal trade in fake or faulty products associated with either treating or fending off the virus is booming.
With illness and fatality rates both mounting and the international community now beginning to drift into a discomfiting ‘new normal,’ a July UN assessment points to a boom in the emergence of “fake or faulty COVID-19 products.” The addition of ‘remedies’ for the virus to what is already a multi-billion dollar trade in fake drugs has led the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to warn that it poses a new risk to health and lives “with criminals exploiting the COVID-19 crisis to cash in on public anxiety.”
The UNODC study titled “COVID-19-related Trafficking of Medical Products as a Threat to Public Health” also says that the likelihood of a further proliferation of costly but ultimately useless ‘remedies’ for COVID-19 highlights the longstanding shortcomings in regulatory and legal frameworks aimed at preventing the manufacturing and selling of these products, UNODC says that its research reveals that “transnational organized crime groups take advantage of gaps in national regulation and oversight to peddle substandard and falsified medical product.”