SFA Insights: The Politics of Counterfeit PPE

You’ll have read about the fake news bubble around the COVID-19 pandemic, but did you know that there has also been a spike in fake products too? Since the start of the year, counterfeit and sub-standard personal protective equipment (PPE) has flooded the global market as hospitals, schools and workplaces scramble to sure-up supplies.

With fakes posing a significant risk to healthcare professionals and the general public at large, one leading German business has been leading the fight back in Germany, turning their considerable expertise in testing and certification to create pop-up centres to test the quality of the masks, and eliminate substandard products.

We worked with Bloomberg’s Prognosis podcast to explore a testing programme running 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, and analysing more than 800 million masks. With countries across Europe beginning to open up once again, and face masks becoming mandatory in many places, the prevalence of faulty masks remains a considerable threat to public safety.

Around ¼ of the masks tested in the laboratory have failed the rigorous testing procedure to-date, so the real work is just beginning.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2020-06-19/how-to-spot-a-fake-mask-podcast