Hungary expects to take delivery of the first shipment of China’s Sinopharm vaccine next week. Gergely Gulyás, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, said the first batch contains 500,000 doses, adding that Hungary’s public health authority is yet to assess the vaccine.
The minister said that more than 30 million people have so far been inoculated with the Sinopharm vaccine worldwide, including ethnic Hungarians living in Serbia. Hungary is also set to receive 200,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine this month.
Although the rollout of the jabs procured by the European Union was still taking too long, next week Hungary expects to resume inoculating people in the oldest age group as well as those under the age of 60 with chronic illnesses. Vaccinations will also resume at social institutions where they had to be suspended, the minister said.
Minister Gulyás said that more than 300,000 people will have received their first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine in Hungary by the end of Thursday, with 294,624 people having received their first Covid shots by Wednesday and more than 117,000 having been fully inoculated.
The minister added that some 30,000 elderly people will be inoculated by their general practitioners using the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Those not under the age of 75 not suffering a chronic illnesses will be inoculated using the Sputnik V jab at hospitals. People below the age of 60 with chronic illnesses are being inoculated using the AstraZeneca vaccine. Hungary has also asked the EU to speed up its vaccine deliveries, which the commission has promised to do.