The second wave of the Chinese communist virus (COVID-19) epidemic in India is raging, resulting in a lack of oxygen supply to hospitals across India, causing many patients to die without timely treatment. Many national non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been purchasing oxygen machines from China through Indian companies to donate to India, but according to Indian buyers, Chinese manufacturers have taken advantage of the situation to inflate prices and lower quality, affecting the life of the oxygen machines and possibly even seriously damaging the lives of patients.
According to an exclusive report by India Today, an Indian importer placed an order for oxygen machines with Chinese manufacturers in April and paid an initial deposit, but the Chinese manufacturers delayed delivery until after the Labor Day holiday, when they began offering higher prices than originally agreed.
According to invoices given to Indian importers by Yuwell Home Medical Equipment, a Chinese manufacturer of oxygen concentrators, the price of oxygen concentrators was $340 per unit on April 30, but rose to $460 by May 12.
Another Indian importer also said that some Chinese companies, such as Zhengzhou Oliver Electronic Technology and Shenzhen Hongxin Yuan Electronics, raised the price of oxygen concentrators ordered in April even to two to three times, or simply refused to deliver, but delayed the return of the deposit.
Regarding the recent price hike of oxygen concentrators in China, Shanghai First Financial News quoted Bo Yusheng, president of the Medical Devices Branch of the China Medical Materials Association, as claiming that it was mainly due to an instantaneous explosion of demand that led to an imbalance between supply and demand, with prices rising as related components were in short supply, and that layers of middlemen in India were also responsible for the increase.
However, an Indian businessman who assists non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in sourcing oxygen machines from Chinese manufacturers said that the increase in the price of oxygen machines was not due to the rising cost of raw materials, but to a deliberate “limited supply” by Chinese manufacturers. Most Chinese raw material suppliers and factories are also making the most of the current situation, leading buyers to have to offer higher purchase values.
In addition to price inflation, some Indian importers also allege that, more seriously, Chinese oxygen concentrators are experiencing significant quality and specification degradation, even using cheaper components than before, which directly affects the life of the oxygen concentrators and could seriously compromise the safety of patients in India.
One buyer even alleged that although he paid a higher price to the Chinese manufacturer, the quality was only half of the original, and the service life of the oxygen concentrator dropped from several thousand hours to only a few hundred hours.
The South China Morning Post reported that India’s Consul General in Hong Kong, Priyanka Chauhan, said that India has discussed the issue with the Chinese authorities and asked them to stop the price hike of medical products and to keep the supply chain open and prices stable.
According to the latest data, India has had another 259,242 confirmed cases of the CCP virus in the past 24 hours, with 4,209 deaths, making a cumulative total of more than 26.03 million confirmed cases and 291,366 deaths so far. Although the number of confirmed cases has been significantly reduced from the peak of more than 400,000 new cases per day, but the number of deaths is still at its peak.
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