The latest news from Spanish media is that more than two years after the outbreak, the Spanish Ministry of Health continues to try to recover more than 9.2 million euros in payments made in the spring of 2020 to purchase gloves, masks and alcohol-based hand sanitizer to avoid infection, as well as respiratory machines, which are necessary machines to care for the sickest patients in intensive care units .
Specifically, legal services agency of the Spanish National Institute of Health Management (INGESA) continues to file lawsuits against four companies, two of which are Chinese companies, to repay their money because the other parties did not ship or product at all. Unqualified.
Due to the shortage of supplies at the time, various countries purchased without restraint, and the government paid in advance in a hurry to buy. The Court of Audit analyzed the total value of these contracts to be 551 million. Of these, only 1.8 million have been recovered so far. According to information provided by the Ministry of Health through the Transparency Portal, the first claims procedure, a contract awarded to Shandong Lianfu Pharmaceutical Company in March 2020 for 779,301 euros to purchase 260,000 units of disinfectant gel, now claims that "non-compliance is attributable to the contractor" Terms were agreed upon” because the gel delivered by the company was not considered a medical device and therefore was not eligible for purchase.
Another one is €2.4 million from the company Hong Jin Medical Science, from which Spain purchased nearly 1 million FFP2 and KN95 masks that were “unfit for use” because they did not provide the required protection.
