Medical Product Quality Reports
Read our Medical Product Quality Reports about substandard and falsified (SF) COVID-19 medical products and COVID-19 vaccines, which include data from scientific literature, public alerts and warnings, and lay press from across the world.
During the pandemic, the demand for COVID-19 related medical supplies has inevitably ballooned with an increased demand for personal protective equipment, diagnostics and preventive and curative pharmaceuticals. The high demand and related shortages of genuine products continue to contribute to an increased global risk of substandard and falsified (SF) medical products, for COVID-19 and for many other essential medicines.
These regular reports aim to collate information and reports in the public domain on the quality of medicinal products that are currently in use, or that are being trialled for COVID-19’s prevention or treatment. We do not aim to include discussion of the multiple fraudulent claims and quackery. We also include reports on key subjects such as access, affordability or off-label use for COVID-19 if they mention concern of the quality of the products. The reports presented were mostly extracted from the Medicines Quality Monitoring Globe (MQM Globe), a system that scrapes online newspapers (referenced in Google News) for early warnings of substandard and falsified medical products. The reports also include scientific literature and policy documents related to COVID-19 medical products quality identified by manual searches in PubMed and Google Scholar.
Read our latest Monthly Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Supplies
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 15: September 2022 (Data for January to March 2022)
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 15: September 2022 (Data for January to March 2022)
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 14: April 2022 (Data for October - December 2021) main text plus annexes
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 13: January 2022 (Data for August & September 2021) main text
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 13: January 2022 (Data for August & September 2021) annexes
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 12: October 2021 (Data for June & July) main text (French translation)
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 12: October 2021 (Data for June & July) annexes (French translation)
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 12: October 2021 (Data for June & July) main text
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 12: October 2021 (Data for June & July) annexes
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 11: August 2021 (Data for April to May)
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 10: May 2021 (Data for March)
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 9: March 2021 (Data for February) main text plus annexes
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 9: March 2021 (Data for February) main text
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 8: March 2021 (Data for January) main text plus annexes
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 8: March 2021 (Data for January) main text
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 7: January 2021 (Data for December) main text plus annexes
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 7: January 2021 (Data for December) main text
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 6: December 2020 (Data for November) main text plus annexes
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 6: December 2020 (Data for November) main text
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 5: November 2020 (Data for October) main text plus annexes
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 5: November 2020 (Data for October) main text
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 4: October 2020 (Data for September) main text plus annexes
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 4: October 2020 (Data for September) main text
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 3: September 2020 (Data for August) main text plus annexes
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 3: September 2020 (Data for August) main text
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 2: August 2020 (Data for July) main text plus annexes
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 2: August 2020 (Data for July) main text.
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 1: July 2020 (Data for January to June) main text plus annexes.
Medical Product Quality Report - COVID-19 Issues. Issue 1: July 2020 (Data for January to June) main text only.
The reports aimed to support 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.
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)