Hungary ahead of other EU member states in vaccine procurement

The vaccine will save lives and jobs and restore normalcy, he said.

Menczer said that because of how slow the rollout of the vaccine had been on the part of the EU, Hungary had entered into talks with Russia and the country’s drug regulator has approved the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. “Because of this, the left and Brussels are constantly attacking the Hungarian government,” he added.

The state secretary also said that German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s announcement that Germany had begun talks on purchasing vaccines from Russia indicated that “this vaccine is important and there is a need for it.”

“The same thing happened as regards China,” Menczer said, noting that Hungary has approved the purchase of the Sinopharm vaccine, “triggering attacks again from Brussels and the left”. This, he added, had been followed by Bavarian premier Markus Soeder talking about the importance of the Chinese vaccine.

“What we’ve been seeing in recent months is that Hungary has overtaken the other EU member states when it comes to the procurement of vaccines,” Menczer said. “We overtook Brussels.”

But Serbia, he added, had been “even quicker”, noting that the country has already inoculated more than 300,000 people with the Chinese vaccine, without any reports of side effects.