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Gulyás: EU's vaccine procurement is "sluggish"

Gergely Gulyás said that due to the European Union’s sluggish procurement procedure, EU-bought vaccines will not suffice for mass inoculation.

 

Gergely Gulyás, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, said that due to the European Union’s sluggish procurement procedure, EU-bought vaccines will not suffice for mass inoculation.

According to MTI, Gulyás said Hungary is working to achieve the 70 percent inoculation rate set by the European Commission as soon as possible. However, it will also need vaccines from other sources, such as the UK’s AstraZeneca, Russia’s Sputnik V and China’s Sinopharm, he added, noting that the EU has yet to approve AstraZeneca, even though it has been in use since December.

Regarding Sputnik V, Gulyás said Hungary’s pharmaceutical authority approved the vaccine after a “thorough, two-month review”. Sputnik V is safe and was manufactured using cutting-edge technology, he said. He added that Germany is currently looking to approve it. Hungary has contracted enough Sputnik to inoculate 300,000 people, he said.

The minister added that sinopharm has proven to be very effective, as 15 million people worldwide have already been vaccinated using it. Serbia is already using the vaccine to inoculate its citizens, among them ethnic Hungarians, he said.

Meanwhile, Pfizer has delivered 13 million doses to the US, 2.7 million to Israel and 8.5 million to the European Union, he said, an amount which he said was too small for effective protection.