The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine fined Yuria-Pharm LLC 528 thousand hryvnias ($20 thousand) for disseminating false information about its ability to fight coronaviruses in advertising its medicine ‘Dekasan’.
The manufacturer assured in the commercial that the medicine acts on all complex viruses, including coronaviruses. However, the results of clinical trials that could confirm the therapeutic or prophylactic effect of the drug against COVID-19 disease were not provided. There is also no data on the treatment or prevention of coronavirus with Dekasan from the World Health Organization and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.
The Antimonopoly Committee regarded this as misleading consumers, so Yuria-Pharm could gain a competitive advantage over other pharmaceutical manufacturers who did not disseminate false information about the health benefits of their drugs.