BUDAPEST, Hungary (PA) – A shipment of COVID-19 vaccines produced in China arrived in Hungary on Tuesday, making it the first of 27 European Union nations to receive a Chinese vaccine.
A plane carrying 550,000 doses of vaccine developed by the Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm landed at Budapest International Airport after flying from Beijing. The dispatch is enough to treat 275,000 people with the two-dose jab, Dr. Agnes Galgoczy of the National Center for Public Health told a news conference.
“With this vaccine, five different types are now available in Hungary, so we can vaccinate as many people as possible as soon as possible,” Galgoczy said, adding that vaccines will not start until transportation is evaluated by the National Vaccine Center Public health. .
The Hungarian health authorities were the first in the EU to approve the Sinopharm jab for emergency use on January 29. This came after a government decree streamlined the process of approving Hungary’s vaccine, allowing the use of any vaccine given to at least 1 million people worldwide without being controlled by the country’s drug regulator.
The country expects to receive 5 million total doses of Sinopharm vaccine in the next four months, enough to treat 2.5 million people in the country, nearly 10 million.
Hungarian officials, including Prime Minister Viktor Orban, have criticized the EU’s joint vaccine procurement program, saying the slow launch of the blockade’s shots is costing lives.
“If the vaccines don’t come from Brussels, we have to get them elsewhere … Hungarians can’t be allowed to die simply because Brussels is too slow to get vaccines,” Orban said last month.
Hungary has also agreed to buy 2 million doses of Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, which hospitals began administering in Budapest last week.
On Friday, Orban said that these additional vaccines from Russia and China will allow Hungary to vaccinate millions more. by the end of May than other European countries with similar populations.
“As things stand now, (we can vaccinate) 6.8 million people by the end of May or the beginning of June,” Orban said in a radio interview. “I think this is huge.”
Orban said earlier that he would personally choose to be inoculated with the Sinopharm vaccine because he has the greatest confidence in it.
“I think the Chinese have known about this virus for a long time and they probably know it best,” he said last month.
The Sinopharm vaccine, which the developer says is almost 80% effective, is already in use in Serbia, Hungary’s neighbor outside the EU, where about half a million people, including ethnic Hungarians, have already received the jab. The company has not yet released data on the results of the phase 3 vaccine studies.
The new delivery of vaccines represents about 40% of all doses of COVID-19 vaccine that Hungary has received so far and makes Sinopharm almost as widespread in Hungary as the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine.
But recent polls show some Hungarians are reluctant to receive the Sinopharm jab. A survey of 1,000 people in the capital of Budapest, conducted by the Median survey and the Research Center 21, showed that of those who want to receive a vaccine, only 27% would get a Chinese vaccine, compared to 43% a Russian vaccine. and 84% a vaccine developed in Western countries. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3%.
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This story has been corrected to show that about 500,000 people have been vaccinated in Serbia, including ethnic Hungarians, not 500,000 ethnic Hungarians.
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