BUDAPEST, HUNGARY (AP) – A consignment of COVID-19 vaccines manufactured in China arrived in Hungary on Tuesday, becoming the first of the 27 countries of the European Union to receive a Chinese vaccine.
A jet with 550,000 doses of vaccine developed by the Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm landed at Budapest International Airport after flying in from Beijing. Agnes Galgoczy of the National Public Health Center said at a news conference that the shipment was enough to treat 275,000 people with the two-dose jab.
“With this vaccine, there are now five different species available in Hungary, so we can get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible,” Galgoczy said, adding that vaccine surveys will begin before the shipment is evaluated by the National Center for Public Health . .
Hungarian health authorities were the first in the EU to approve the Synopharm jab for emergency use on 29 January. This comes after a government decision simplified the process of approving the vaccine for Hungary by allowing any vaccine administered to at least 1 million people worldwide to be used without being underwent by the country’s drug regulator.
The country expects to receive 5 million total doses of the Sinopharm vaccine over the next four months, enough to treat 2.5 million people in the country of nearly 10 million.
Hungarian officials, including Prime Minister Viktor Orban, were critical of the EU’s joint vaccine program, claiming that the bloc’s slowness of shots cost lives.
“If vaccines do not come from Brussels, we must get them from elsewhere … One cannot allow Hungarians to die simply because Brussels is too slow to obtain vaccines,” Orban said last month.
Hungary has also agreed to purchase 2 million doses of Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, which began administering hospitals in Budapest last week.
On Friday, Orban claimed that these additional vaccinations from Russia and China would enable Hungary to vaccinate millions more people. by the end of May than other European countries with similar populations.
“As things stand now, we could vaccinate 6.8 million people by the end of May or beginning of June,” Orban said in a radio interview. “I think it’s big.”
Orban had earlier said he would personally prefer to be vaccinated with the Sinopharm vaccine as he trusts it most.
“I think the Chinese have known this virus for the longest time and they probably know it best,” he said last month.
The Sinopharm vaccine, which according to the developer is almost 80% effective, is already being used in Hungary, the non-EU neighbor Serbia, where about half a million people, including ethnic Hungarians, have already been stabbed. The company has not yet released data on the results of the Phase 3 trials of the vaccine.
The new vaccine transport represents approximately 40% of all COVID-19 vaccine doses received so far in Hungary, making Sinopharm in Hungary almost as common as the Pfizer BioNtech vaccine.
Recent polls, however, show that some Hungarians are reluctant to get the Sinopharm sting. A survey of 1,000 people in the capital of Budapest by collaborator Median and the 21 Research Center showed that among those willing to receive a vaccine, only 27% would take a Chinese vaccine, compared to 43% ‘ a Russian vaccine and 84% a jab. in Western countries. The poll had an error margin of plus or minus 3%.
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This story has been corrected to show that about 500,000 people were vaccinated in Serbia, including ethnic Hungarians, not 500,000 ethnic Hungarians.
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