MOSCOW (Reuters) – Mexican authorities have seized a batch of fake doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which is responsible for the exports of the COVID-19 vaccine, said on Thursday.
“Earlier today, Mexican authorities seized a batch of vaccines designed and packaged as Sputnik V,” said the RDIF sovereign wealth fund.
“Analysis of the photos of the seized lot, including the design of the containers and labels, suggests that it is a fake substance that has nothing to do with the original vaccine,” the fund said in a statement.
The first shipment of the Sputnik V vaccine – a delivery of 200,000 doses – arrived in Mexico on February 23. It was approved for emergency use by Mexican regulators at the beginning of last month.
The false batch of 5,775 doses was seized at Mexico’s Campeche International Airport, a government statement said. I was on my way to a private plane to Honduras.
The bottles, whose labels were misspelled in Russian, were hidden between cans of soda in an ice box, according to images shared by the government.
(Reporting by Polina Ivanova; Editing by Alison Williams and Paul Simao)