Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has ordered a probe into tens of millions of counterfeit medical gloves reportedly imported into the US from Thailand, following a report by CNN.

Some 80 million counterfeit rubber gloves were believed imported into the US and the Commerce Ministry has asked for further information about the case from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Normally, when it comes to a fraud case involving medical gloves, it typically involves one of three forms -- used gloves that have been washed and repackaged, sub-standard medical gloves imported from China and repackaged, and sub-standard medical gloves produced locally in Thailand, police said.

The CNN report concerns two cases of counterfeit medical gloves in Thailand, and the first case dealt with the unauthorised production and repackaging of medical gloves and unlawful usage of two trademarks, SkyMed and Sri Trang.

The second case dealt with the production of counterfeit medical gloves by Athip Chumphon, who had earlier last year made headlines when he was reportedly involved in the hoarding of millions of surgical masks during the Covid-19 outbreak, police said.

In a raid carried out last December at a warehouse owned by Paddy The Room Trading Co, the authorities found a large volume of used gloves and a number of workers packing those gloves in new packages containing the SkyMed label.