"Shandong vaccine scandal damages confidence in China health system", 19 Apr 2017

…About two million improperly stored vaccines were sold around the country from an overheated, dilapidated storeroom. The main suspect in the case is a hospital pharmacist from Heze who had been convicted of trading in illegal vaccines in 2009 and was doing it again two years later. Many parents said they were especially alarmed that nearly a year had elapsed from the time the police uncovered the illicit trade and the time the public first learned about it in February.

…Despite such fears, the tainted vaccines are more likely to be ineffective than harmful. The World Health Organization has said that outdated or poorly stored vaccines rarely if ever trigger illness or toxic reactions. Chinese government investigators said…they had not found any cases of adverse reactions or spikes in infections linked to ineffective vaccines. The greater danger may be more insidious. The erosion of public trust could damage China’s immunization program…critics said, that kept the scandal under wraps, a delay that now makes it harder to track those who received the suspect injections.

…[I]nvestigators reported that 202 people had been detained over the scandal, and 357 officials dismissed, demoted or otherwise punished. Health and drug officials promised to tighten vaccine purchase rules to stamp out under-the-counter trade…