BEIJING - Desperate families searching for critical Covid-19 medication in China, faced with bare pharmacy shelves and an explosion of cases, are being driven into murky online marketplaces rife with price gouging and fraud.
China’s people have long endured scandals involving tainted medicine, fabricated clinical trials and lax regulation in the medical industry – prompting many to be sceptical of domestically-produced pharmaceuticals. After being directed to a sleek “official” website, Qiu then forked out 12,000 yuan for six boxes of Paxlovid, according to payment records seen by AFP.
In a statement to AFP, Ghitai said it was aware of a fake version of its website that claimed to provide Covid medication, adding that instances of fraud had been reported to police.
One or two Chinese out of 1.4 billion Chinese is insignificant to report. This is a waste of bandwidth...
opinion: paxlovid antivirals