250,000 doses of Sputnik V arrived on Sunday
Szijjarto: Chinese, Russian jabs greatly helped speed up Hungary’s vaccination drive
Szijjarto said in the interview that by Sunday morning more than 1.5 million Hungarians had been inoculated against the coronavirus, which would not have been possible if vaccines had not been procured from the East.
Some 700,000 Hungarians received an Eastern vaccine as their first jab, and it is easy to calculate how much worse the situation would be, had Hungary not bought vaccines from China and Russia, he said.
“Vaccine is not a question of ideology for us it is a matter of savings lives and if we had not contracted Chinese and Russian vaccine we couldn’t have saved the health and lives of many Hungarians,” he added.
Szijjarto said that Sputnik V had been reviewed by Hungarian experts and approved by the national regulatory body, as allowed under European Union regulations in cases of emergency.
“And that’s what made us a little bit fed up…that the way Hungary has approved Sputnik was considered in the Western part of Europe and in global media as if we had made something against the European regulations which is not true. European regulations say very clearly that in the case of emergency you can make such a move,” he said.
“We’re actually used to that. Whatever we do here in Hungary is immediately attacked and then a couple of months or years after, everybody follows. Of course, nobody gives the credit for us to be first, but this is not how politics works,” he added.
Szijjarto said every day around 9,000-10,000 Hungarians are registered as being infected with Covid-19, while the number of deaths exceeds 200 and the economy suffers damage of more than 30 million euros because of restrictions.
“So it’s very easy to calculate: if you are able to increase the number of vaccines in your country and if you are able to accelerate the vaccination procedure, you can win big. You can save the lives of the people, you can save the health of the people and you can come closer to…re-opening the country and re-starting the economy,” he added.
“So I think this is the very clear reason why now western European countries understand that if they are not able to add Sputnik or any other type of vaccine to their portfolio, they will be in a very complicated and challenging situation,” he said.
“I can tell you one thing for sure, the centralised procurement procedure managed by Brussels has failed, has failed because, regardless of the promises and the expectations, there are much less vaccines arriving and much slower compared to what had been said before,” he added.
250,000 doses of Sputnik V arrived on Sunday
Some 250,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V Covid vaccine arrived in Hungary on Sunday evening. Szijjarto said on Facebook that vaccination was the “only recipe for victory” in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.
Once the national public health centre clears the vaccines for use, they will be distributed to vaccination points and “another big step can be taken toward having 2.5 million people vaccinated”, he said.
The Hungarian cargo aircraft will remain in service next week, when 180,000 doses of vaccine are expected to arrive from Moscow, to be followed by another shipment of 250,000 doses, Szijjarto said.
