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Kasler: WHO's Sinopharm approval proves government position

Minister: Hungarian opposition fails on Sinopharm

The Hungarian opposition has ultimately proved wrong in its position on rejecting China's Covid-19 vaccine, the foreign minister said on Friday afternoon, after the World Health Organisation (WHO) approved Sinopharm for emergency use.

“The world’s best experts have asserted that Sinopharm is an effective and safe vaccine,” Peter Szijjarto told public media.

The minister said that WHO is the world’s top decision-making body on health issues with the best and most experienced doctors, epidemiologists and virologists working in its ranks. These experts have thoroughly examined every Covid-19 vaccine including Sinopharm, of which Hungary has procured 5 million doses and used it to inoculate several hundreds of thousands of its citizens, Szijjarto said.

WHO’s experts approved the Chinese vaccine as a safe and effective vaccine after extremely rigorously inspections, he said, noting that Sinopharm “has been added to the same list” that contains the western vaccines, namely Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Moderna.

“Now surely many members of the [Hungarian] leftist opposition are ashamed, since their politicians have done everything they could to dissuade Hungarians from accepting Sinopharm,” Szijjarto said, accusing the opposition of “pursuing an irresponsible policy that is a threat to people’s lives”.

“But their policy has failed for good,” Szijjarto said.

Kasler: WHO’s Sinopharm approval proves government position

The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) approval of the Sinopharm vaccine is “a justification” for the Hungarian government’s vaccination policy, Human Resources Minister Miklos Kasler said on Friday evening, in reaction to WHO’s announcement.  “Hungary’s vaccination policy has been driven exclusively by health-care considerations, political or economic considerations did not play any role,” he said on Facebook.

Kasler noted that China has delivered to Hungary enough doses to have more than one million people fully inoculated against coronavirus.

The national vaccination programme has allowed a gradual reopening of the country, he said.

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