Hungary started on Friday to inject citizens with the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, becoming the first European Union country to administer a coronavirus inoculation that has not yet been tested and approved by the bloc’s regulators.
With Hungary’s economy suffering and national elections approaching next year, adopting such vaccines is part of the government’s strategy to fully fight the coronavirus after a series of errors allowed it to spread in Hungary.
The decision by Viktor Orban, Hungary’s far-right Prime Minister, to move forward with the ambitious vaccination plan comes after the European Union’s own response to the distribution of the vaccine has lagged behind the United States, Israel and Britain.
Orban has few options for reviving the Hungarian economy, as he is opposed to distributing significant humanitarian aid to citizens and businesses and appears to be betting heavily on vaccinating the entire country, with an eye on next year’s elections.
“We avoid the extreme temptation to return to an aid-based economy during the crisis,” Orban said last week at the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “Many said that aid must be distributed during a crisis. This may be appropriate in some countries under certain circumstances. I don’t see Hungary as one of those countries. “
But his adoption of vaccines that still need EU approval – Sputnik V, as well as a Chinese one made by Sinopharm that is due to be launched in the near future – also provided an opportunity to score political points against what Mr. Orban sees as a dominant and ineffective European Union in the race for the 2022 elections.
“My opinion is that what I need, and what the Hungarian people need, is not an explanation, but a vaccine, and if it is not coming from Brussels, then it must come from elsewhere,” said Orban in January. “It cannot be that the Hungarian people are dying because the acquisition of vaccines in Brussels is slow. This is simply unacceptable. “
Orban is at odds with the European Union because of Hungary’s hard-line policies regarding the treatment of migrants, considered illegal by the European Court of Justice, as well as issues such as the rule of law, corruption and media freedom.
Critics argue that by advancing vaccines that have not been approved in the European Union, Orban is undermining the bloc’s joint vaccination program, which coordinates orders and distribution.
“Orban is using the vaccine to play a perfidious political game to weaken, dismember the bloc,” said Andrzej Halicki, a Polish member of the European Parliament.
“Russia is implementing a dumping tactic, trying to enter the European market, offering Hungarians a lower price for its vaccine, and Orban is trying to destroy the common vaccination strategy under the guise of this lower price,” he said.
For the time being, the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has avoided directly criticizing Orban’s approach.
“If a member state wants to conclude contracts with companies not covered by our vaccine strategy, it has the right to do so,” said Stefan De Keersmaecker, a spokesman for the commission on Wednesday.
But, he said, Hungary would also be responsible for the use of unapproved vaccines. “This is different from the EMA authorization, where the responsibility remains with the manufacturer,” he said, referring to the European Medicines Agency, the EU regulator.
Although many EU members have expressed frustration at the bloc’s lengthy takeover procedures, Hungary is the only one, so far, to break with the collective strategy.
Neither Russian nor Chinese producers requested a continuous review or marketing authorization with the European Medicines Agency. But Russian scientists sought formal scientific advice from the EU regulator, a step seen as a precursor to collecting appropriate data and documentation to request a review.
Sputnik V only this month had its first peer-reviewed feedback in the scientific publication The Lancet, which indicated that it was safe and effective. The Sinopharm vaccine has been approved for use in China, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, but the company has not yet published the detailed results of its Phase 3 trial.
Other EU nations have started to consider Sputnik V since it received its positive rating on The Lancet, EU officials say, and that could help its authorization by the bloc. Despite his complaints about delays in vaccine mobilization by the European Union, which only became apparent in December, Orban’s strategy was already evident in November, when his foreign minister announced that the government was in negotiations with Russia on import and possibly manufacturing, Sputnik V.
Peter Kreko, director of Political Capital, a research institute in Budapest, said that Orban was now motivated by a desire to appear faster and more efficient than the European Union.
While there is a strong desire to get the economy up and running again, said Kreko, the prime minister is also working to repair the image caused by his government’s inadequate treatment of the pandemic and the high mortality rates in Hungary.
Dr Ferenc Falus, a former Hungarian medical director, said the public health response has been deficient on several levels. Since the start of the pandemic, he said, systemic problems with contact tracking have made it completely inefficient. The failure to offer free mass testing has contributed to a distorted understanding of the prevalence of the virus, he said.
The relaxation of restrictions between August and November, said Falus, “was a big mistake because it resulted in an incredibly high increase in mortality.”
Hungary recorded 383,735 cases of the coronavirus, with 13,543 deaths, according to a New York Times database, although experts believe the number of deaths related to the virus is much higher.
Although Orban and his government have emphasized the merits of Russian and Chinese vaccines, many Hungarians are still suspicious of these shots, Kreko said.
He cited a recent survey by Hungarian researcher Median, which showed that twice as many Hungarians would choose Western vaccines over Sputnik, and three times more than Sinopharm.
He said that waiting until these vaccines received approval from the European Medicines Agency could expand the public’s openness about their use.
“That would not fit into Orban’s strategy because he wants to show how slow and incompetent Brussels is while the Hungarian government is doing much better,” he said.
The Hungarian Chamber of Doctors, a leading association of doctors, urged the government and domestic regulators to approve vaccines only after transparently following the rules on drug safety and testing according to the standards of the European Medicines Agency.
Like other European Union countries, Hungary’s economy was hit by blockages after the coronavirus spread rapidly in the spring, with its service sector particularly hit.
“Almost the same has happened everywhere,” said Gergely Tardos, chief economist at OTP Bank. “Hungary was more or less lucky because the industry recovered in the third quarter – but that was not true for tourism, restaurants and many services.”
The hardest hit were those in the sector who work outside the books, as is typical in Hungary, especially in small companies and in hotels and tourism.
Facing the illegal and semi-legal employment of such individuals is a political landmine, said Zoltan Pogatsa, an economist at the University of Sopron.
Hospitality and tourism account for about 10% of Hungary’s economy and workforce, he said, and those who work informally would not be entitled to unemployment benefits, which are already low by EU standards and the lowest the block.
Monika Pronczuk contributed reporting from Brussels.