COVID-19 has been declared as pandemic by WHO at 11^th March 2020. As of 25 April 2020, more than 2.84 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in 185 countries and territories, resulting in more than 199,000 deaths, it has become a threat to the human existence.^[1] The whole world is focused to mitigate this problematic situation. Nearly, all the country round the globe has imposed lockdown to restrict the mobility of their situation to reduce the transmission of the virus. The increased demand of the many essential products such as medicines, groceries and recent cutoff of their supplies has disturbed the equilibrium of the economy.

In this state of panic, the trend of product adulteration has been rapidly reported around the world. Falsified/Unregistered medicines has been widely supplied. Similarly, wide variety groceries and food items for daily consumption is also adulteration and substandarized is also found. It becomes extremely important to understand term “Falsified”, “Unregistered”,” adulteration ” and ” Substandard”. Substandard also called “out of specification”, these are authorized medical products that fail to meet either their quality standards or specifications, or both. Unregistered/unlicensed medical products that have not undergone evaluation and/or approval by the National or Regional Regulatory Authority for the market in which they are marketed/distributed or used, subject to permitted conditions under national or regional regulation and legislation. Falsified medical products that deliberately/fraudulently misrepresent their identity, composition or source.^[2] Food Adulteration refers to the process by which the quality or the nature of a given food is reduced through addition of adulterants or removal of vital substance. Food adulterants refer to the foreign and usually inferior chemical substance present in food that cause harm or is unwanted in the food.^[3]

Variety of news have been reported about the increase in supply of the substandard products around the globe. Recently, Nepal has canceled the medical supply deals with Chinese Company as the 19 items including PPE and testing kits to be supplied for fighting with COVID-19 was found substandard.^[4] We can also find various of unregistered instant hand sanitizer flooded in market since COVID outbreak_.Some sanitizer have benzalkonium chloride  as active ingredient but CDC recommends at least 60% alcohol against corona prevention.^[5]

Read full on : https://publichealthupdate.com/a-state-of-dual-pandemic-covid-19-falsified-products/