Hyderabad: In an alarming finding, the police has discovered that there are some people who are involved in black marketing of antiviral drug for Covid-19 Remdesivir are those who have earlier captured the injection for their near ones and dear ones for Coronavirus treatment.
By this time, the hospitals continue to use Remdesivir in the treatment of Coronavirus infected patients. With their will either recovering from the infection or falling casualty to it, they are no longer in need of the vital vials and are now habituating to illegal sales to make a quick money. However, some of them have gotten caught in the police net. Moreover, deputy commissioner of police (Task Force) G Chakravarthy said that in some of the cases which they had busted in connection with illegal sales of Remdesivir, they catch persons related to Covid-19 patients as well. “When their kin, anguished with Covid-19, who were in need of Remdesivir, they had.
“When their family members, afflicted with Covid-19 positive, were in the need of Remdesivir, they had also bought the injections, which were not so easy to get in hand due to its heavy demand in the city. However, when their family recovered earlier before the full course of medication or died while undergoing treatment, the patient’s relatives were selling the leftover jabs at a higher price in the black market,” Hyderabad police said.
Although the cost of each Remdesivir injection is around Rs 3,490 per unit, some tried to sell the unused drug and injections of Covid-19 for around Rs 15,000 a vial. In the last five cases, relatives of Covid-19 patients were caught and the drug vials related to the recovery of Covid-19 were seized. In some cases, police have found that the prospective sellers tried their best to pass it on to patients who were in need at the same price they had acquired earlier. Police, however, intimidated them and let them go as trading in the drug is not legal.
Remdesivir is being sold by those pharmacists only after the collection of a patient’s Aadhaar details, Covid-19 positive report, prescription by a doctor and other documents from the hospitals officially. “As per the rule, the medicals must and should report back to the drug and meds distributors to whom they had supplied Remdesivir,” Task Force inspector S Raghavendra said.