Socialist MEP: Government keeping vaccination strategy under wraps

Addressing an online press conference on Saturday, Ujhelyi said that as a member of the European Parliament’s committee dealing with public health matters, he had filed several public data requests with the relevant ministries for information on the government’s vaccination strategy but had yet to receive a response from any of them.

“The Hungarian government is clearly lying and being sneaky,” Ujhelyi said. He said that whereas the prime minister in the past had referred to his government’s vaccination plan “as an existing document”, another government body had said it was still in progress, while the chief medical officer had also praised the strategy.

The MEP also criticised senior government officials for not having got the vaccine yet, saying they were “failing to set an example”.

“[Prime Minister] Viktor Orbán is hypocritically dodging the issue by saying that he’ll wait for his turn, when we have no idea about the order in which they’ll get the vaccine,” Ujhelyi said. “We don’t know how they’re determining the order or even who’s doing it.”

“Thanks to the European Union, Hungary has access to a vaccine, and all [ruling] Fidesz would’ve had to do was come up with a vaccination plan and organise a campaign encouraging the public to get vaccinated, but they’ve failed at both,” he said.