China has dismantled a criminal line of fake Covid-19 vaccines that operated in September 2020 and arrested dozens of people.

Police departments in Jiangsu province, the capital Beijing and Shandong province have launched a joint campaign to arrest more than 80 people involved in a production line of more than 3,000 doses of fake Covid-19 vaccine, Xinhua said on Monday.

The suspects were arrested when China's Ministry of Public Security investigated criminal activities related to the manufacture and sale of fake vaccines, as well as illegal drug sales and fraud under the guise of vaccines.

Police have found that these guys have reaped huge profits by using physiological saline to counterfeit Covid-19 vaccine, selling them at high prices since September 2020.

China is organizing mass vaccinations for people with Covid-19 vaccine from two domestic companies, Sinovac and Sinopharm.

Both companies initially said their vaccines were 78% more effective, but the last-stage clinical trials of vaccine candidate Sinovac in Brazil were only 50.38% effective.

Sinovac insists its vaccine is effective, despite some countries considering and halting its vaccine distribution, while scientists urged the Chinese pharmaceutical company to provide more data.

Sinopharm, the state-owned company that had the first Covid-19 vaccine approved in China, said its product was 79.34 percent effective in trials.