The Nas carabinieri have obscured 14 sites offering anti-Covid drugs and vaccines, but also doping products, as part of the controls against pharmaceutical cybercrime.
The measures were issued by the General Directorate of Medical Devices and Pharmaceutical Service of the Ministry of Health.
On these sites, located on foreign servers and with references from unidentifiable managers, advertising and the offer for sale, also in Italian, of various types of medicines were carried out, many of which also connected with the pandemic emergency from COVID- 19.
In the "virtual showcase" of one of these sites, structured in a similar way to an ecommerce platform, in addition to being promoted and advertised various types of goods produced and / or distributed by third parties, including many of the health type, were presented in sale, with photographs showing the primary or external packaging, including 4 vaccines for COVID-19 potentially purchasable by connected users from the national territory.
Other 8 sites, on the other hand, presented a medicinal product of Chinese origin with alleged therapeutic properties of COVID-19, which, following the opinion of the AIFA, did not have a marketing authorization.
The telematic monitoring activity conducted to protect the health of network users, explains a note from the Nas, "has also been extended to other drugs subject to medical prescription and sold only in pharmacies by a qualified pharmacist, which however were illicitly offered for sale and advertised online in violation of stringent national regulations. In detail, a site offering a testosterone-based preparation and 3 other sites offering an antiviral drug used against hepatitis C were subject to blackout. finally, to mention the inhibition of access to another site that presented not only medicines based on salbutamol, a bronchodilator used in the treatment of asthma, and the anti-inflammatory tramadol, substances which, moreover, are included among those prohibited for doping , but also a product allegedly based on dinitrophenol, a chemical substance not intended for human consumption which, if taken, alters the
ntions of the cells causing them to disperse energy as heat instead of storing it inside them, resulting in a 'fat burning' effect that leads to rapid weight loss, but is highly unpredictable and seriously harmful to the body as it causes an increase in body temperature, profuse sweating and increased heart and respiratory rate ".