Over 31 million. That is how many fake or inferior face masks Chinese public security authorities said they had seized when they reported the figure on Wednesday, February 26, 2020, as reported by Kyodo News. The number says less about police efficiency than about desperation: the country was short of masks, and somebody was making money from it.
Business Insider, citing the same Kyodo report, added more detail. Nearly 688 cases of fake mask production and distribution had been opened in China, involving about 1,560 arrests. At that point COVID-19 had killed more than 2,700 people and infected more than 80,000. Even with donations arriving from other countries, China still faced shortages, because people kept emptying shelves in shops and online. Top-selling mask brands had warned the public to be wary of fakes and to avoid sellers they could not trust.
A fake that carried someone else’s certificate
The problem did not stay inside China. On March 31, 2020, Global News in Canada reported on an investigation into Chinese-made “N95” masks sold online as certified by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH. The masks were the Valpro Ranger 821 and 821V. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention they were counterfeits, falsely carrying an approval number that belongs to 3M.
They had been advertised on Midas Safety websites in China, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Oman and Saudi Arabia, and on the Valpro Safety site in the United Arab Emirates. After Global News asked questions, the listings came down, with the counterfeits pulled from websites in India, Pakistan and a half-dozen other countries. Kashif Ali, a vice-president at Midas Safety’s Toronto office, said: “Thank you for bringing such counterfeit items to our attention.” He said the company never sold or authorized counterfeit respirators and that a web administrator had mistakenly put the masks on its sites. They had been rejected by a distributor in the UAE, he said, which had ordered them from a Chinese supplier that “falsely imprinted the NIOSH approval and 3M TC number.”
The same masks, Global News found, were also on offer through Alibaba, in minimum lots of 100 per order, from a sales company in Henan, China.
Why a fake mask is worse than none
A real N95 is shaped to seal around the nose and filter out 95 per cent of tiny airborne particles. Health-care workers and paramedics rely on it. “To be approved, a respirator model must meet the minimum performance requirements,” CDC spokesman Scott Pauley said. A counterfeit has passed no such test.
Supplies of tested N95s had become scarce as frightened people bought up masks, putting pressure on supply chains as countries including Canada and the United States rushed to equip front-line workers. Hospitals and health-care associations issued urgent calls for N95s in the last week of March. Kerry Bowman, a University of Toronto bioethicist, called the marketing of counterfeit masks “profoundly problematic.”
For families and nurses across the region and beyond, the practical point was simple. A label saying “certified” meant nothing until someone checked it.
Sources
- China seizes over 31 million fake face masks amid coronavirus outbreak – Kyodo News
- China confiscated over 31 million counterfeit face masks as coronavirus fears cause supply shortage and spike in demand – Business Insider (citing Kyodo News)
- Coronavirus: Counterfeit Chinese-made face masks pulled offline after Global News probe – Global News (Sam Cooper, Stewart Bell, Andrew Russell)
