“Today, we are starting vaccination with Chinese batches [da vacina do laboratório Sinopharm]”said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in a brief message posted on the social network Facebook.
The first 550,000 doses arrived from China in mid-February, for a total of five million, enough to vaccinate a quarter of the population of 9.8 million.
The Hungarian National Center for Public Health (NNK) immediately gave its final approval.
Orbán, who has already stated his personal preference for the Sinopharm vaccine in late January, hopes to be immunized next week.
Although the vaccination campaign is advancing, the country is not yet in a position to relax restrictions on combating the new coronavirus, warned the leader, as a “third wave threatens Hungary”.
Hungary currently registers around 100 deaths related to the new coronavirus every day, bringing the total number of deaths to more than 14,550 since the pandemic began, while the number of new infections and hospitalizations increased sharply in February.
The country also approved the Russian vaccine in January, without waiting for the green light from the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and started administering it on February 12, despite citizens’ reluctance.
On this occasion, Viktor Orbán again criticized the process of validation and purchase of vaccines by the EU, considered too slow.
“Every day that we spent waiting for Brussels, we would lose a hundred Hungarian lives,” said Viktor Orbán.
“Why should we think that European experts are more intelligent than we are? I trust Hungarian experts more,” said the Hungarian leader.
The covid-19 pandemic caused at least 2,474,437 deaths worldwide, resulting from more than 111 million cases of infection, according to a report made by the French agency AFP.
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