BUDAPEST (Reuters) – The first 550,000 doses of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine have arrived in Budapest, a leading health official said on Tuesday as Hungary prepares to become the first EU country to roll out the Chinese vaccine.
The shots are being offered for use once the authorities investigate the consignment, the head of the Department of Epidemiology at the National Public Health Center, Agnes Galgoczi, said in an online newsletter.
The EU fell far behind the United States and former EU member Britain with the rollout of vaccines. Hungary’s right – wing government, a strong critic of the EU’s slow implementation, was the first of 27 member states to buy and approve Russian and Chinese vaccines not yet approved by Brussels.
Hungary announced in January that it had reached an agreement with Sinopharm to buy 5 million doses of its vaccine, one of two vaccines China exports worldwide. Last week, Hungary became the first EU member to administer the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.
Hungary wants to speed up its vaccination program despite delays in delivery by Western manufacturers of the shots approved so far by the EU. So far, only about 3% of the population has been vaccinated.
In an effort to increase public confidence in Chinese vaccines, government officials point out that neighboring Serbia, which has a large ethnic Hungarian minority, has been using the Synopharm shots for weeks.
Hungary has reported 389,622 cases of coronavirus since Tuesday since the start of the pandemic, with 13,837 deaths.
(Reporting by Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves; Edited by Gareth Jones)