Medical Product Quality Report: COVID-19 vaccines

COVID-19 vaccines are vital interventions to help end the pandemic. However, issues with equitable global access, falsified, diverted and substandard (especially degraded) vaccines are increasing global public health problems.

Read our Medical Product Quality Report on substandard and falsified (SF) COVID-19 vaccines, which summarise reports in the public domain including data from the lay press, regulatory authorities, scientific literature and public alerts and warnings. Most of the lay press information was extracted from IDDO’s MQM Globe, a free-to-use online tool mapping real-time medicine quality media reports on the quality of medical products across the world.

Gloved hand holding syringe inserted into small vial
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Credit Stockphotokun

The reports aims to aid national medicine regulators, international organisations, vaccine manufacturers and distributors, and civil society by summarising the available public domain literature, to inform action and policy.

SF medical products jeopardise national, regional and global attempts to improve access to effective health care because they lead to avoidable morbidity, waste financial resources and contribute to drug resistance. In the context of COVID-19, SF products undermine the global effort to tackle the pandemic. Since the beginning of the pandemic we identified hundreds of incidents with SF COVID-19 medical products and described some of the risks they hold for public health.

 

Medical Product Quality Reports - COVID-19 vaccines

From June 2021 on, the updates on the quality of COVID-19 vaccines have been integrated in the ‘Medical Product Quality Report on Covid-19 Supplies’, which contains information on multiple product categories affected by the pandemic including vaccines:  Read Monthly Medical Product Quality Reports - COVID-19 Supplies

 

Up to May 2021 monthly cumulative reports focussing specifically on COVID-19 vaccine issues were issued:

Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 vaccines: Issue 5, June 2021 (Data up to 31 May 2021)

Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 vaccines: Issue 4, June 2021 (Data up to 30 April 2021)

Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 vaccines: Issue 3, April 2021 (Data up to 31 March 2021)

Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 vaccines: Issue 2, March 2021 (Data up to 5 March 2021)

Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 vaccines: Issue 1, February 2021 (Data from 12 March 2020 to 10 February 2021)