Mexico City (dpa) – Mexican criminal groups have set up unauthorized laboratories that perform false coronavirus tests, an organization of private security companies said on Thursday.
The gangs have added the tests to other income-generating criminal activities such as extortion and robberies, taking advantage of the “collective panic” created by a rise in infections, Raul Sapien Santos, president of the National Private Security Council, said in a statement.
Falsified test results are “putting the lives and health of thousands of people at risk,” he added.
In the state of Jalisco, the Commission for the Protection from Sanitary Risks reported in October that a company was simulating and falsifying coronavirus tests. Two unauthorized laboratories had earlier been closed.
Sapien said that such laboratories have also been discovered and closed elsewhere in the country, including Mexico City and the states of Tamaulipas and Chihuahua.
Alleged health organizations are marketing rapid coronavirus tests on social media, sometimes posing as pharmaceutical companies, according to Sapien.
Mexico is among the countries hardest hit by the pandemic, with more than 940,000 confirmed infections and over 93,000 deaths. The real figures are believed to be much higher.
GNA