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Coronavirus: ‘don’t fall for Chinese social media scams’ for US$71 ‘vaccine’
- Advertisements claim their products protect against pandemic virus but vaccine firms cited say their genuine products are still in the clinical trial stage
- China’s vaccine industry has been scarred by quality problems and scandals and is now strictly regulated
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
Vaccine producers in China have warned people not to fall for online scams in which profiteering advertisers are offering Covid-19 vaccines for sale, even though no vaccine is on the market yet.
Advertisements claiming to sell two kinds of Covid-19 vaccine have appeared on the WeChat social media platform.
“Contact me if you need the coronavirus vaccine. It can be made for export and production volume is low so people must queue. It will be officially launched on September 2,” said one advertisement claiming to sell a product manufactured by Sinovac Biotech.
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But Sinovac spokesman Liu Peicheng told the South China Morning Post the WeChat advertisement was not authentic. He said Sinovac’s vaccine was currently in phase 3 clinical studies in Brazil and Indonesia and had not been approved for market.
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Liu did not respond to the question of whether the vaccines were real and whether they were produced by Sinovac.
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