Kovacs: Hungary’s vaccination programme among Europe’s most successful

On Tuesday, the media outlet sought to cast doubt over the success of Hungary’s strategy of procuring vaccines from the East, writing that the Russian Sputnik vaccine accounted for less than 3 percent of Hungary’s vaccine supply, while China’s Sinopharm made up around 32 percent.

Hungary is in second place in the EU ranking in terms of vaccinations per capita, with 11 percent of the population having been vaccinated compared with the EU average of 6 percent, Kovacs said.

Hungary, he added, was right to have refused to toe the European Union line on vaccines, instead procuring jabs on its own.

He noted that 1,107,791 people have received their first jab, while 317,906 people have had both inoculations.

Of the 2.1 million available vaccines in Hungary, 1.4 million have already been administered and more than 530,000 doses will be used this week, he added.

DK questions government over vaccine stance on Hungarians across the border

The opposition Democratic Coalition has asked Prime Minister Viktor Orban in writing whether Hungarian citizens living abroad who are not resident in the country were receiving vaccines ordered by Hungary.

Commercial broadcaster ATV recently reported busy traffic on the Hungary-Ukraine border, claiming that as well as “Ukrainian pensioners crossing the border to do their shopping”, they were also coming into Hungary to “get vaccinated”.

DK deputy group leader Agnes Vadai on Wednesday cited the report, saying that whereas all Hungarian citizens should be vaccinated — and in such cases only citizenship, not social insurance payments, mattered — DK nevertheless wanted information on how Hungarians from abroad could register and where the jabs were being administered. Also, it was important to know in what order in the queue they were being vaccinated.

Ruling Fidesz said in reaction that the “anti-vax left” was “still busy attacking the government’s response measures and turning Hungarians against each other”.

“They are putting the lives of those elderly and ill people at risk who refuse the vaccine they are offered because of them,” the party said in a statement. People are at risk of dying because of DK’s “anti-vaccine rhetoric”, it added.