BUDAPEST (Reuters) – The first 550,000 doses of the Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine arrived in Budapest, a senior health official said on Tuesday, as Hungary prepares to become the first EU country to launch the Chinese vaccine.
The vaccines will be offered for use as soon as authorities inspect the shipment, Agnes Galgoczi, head of the epidemiology department at the National Center for Public Health, told an online news conference.
The EU lagged far behind the United States and the former EU member, Britain, in developing 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 authorize Russian and Chinese vaccines not yet approved by Brussels.
Hungary announced in January that it had struck a deal with Sinopharm to buy 5 million doses of its vaccine, one of two that China exports to the world. 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 deliveries by Western manufacturers of vaccines so far approved by the EU. So far, only about 3% of the population has been vaccinated.
In an attempt to boost public confidence in Chinese vaccines, government officials point out that neighboring Serbia, which has a large Hungarian ethnic minority, has been using Sinopharm vaccines for weeks.
As of Tuesday, Hungary had reported 389,622 cases of coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic, with 13,837 deaths.
(Reporting by Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves; Editing by Gareth Jones)