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The Hungarian government has broken with the common EU vaccination strategy. Although with the purchase of the Russian and Chinese vaccines, Hungary has managed to lead the way in the number of doses available per 100 inhabitants in Europe, the efficiency of use is deplorable and the use of the Chinese preparation appears to be experimental.
After living in complete isolation for more than 11 months, Marianne Schmidt, 69, really wants to see her family, making her one of the first in Europe to adopt a coronavirus vaccine made in China, reports the Financial Times in its Budapest report. . I just want to live my life, ”Schmidt said after his doctor stabbed him with the needle on February 25. The Hungarian government has allowed the use of the Chinese Sihopharm product despite breaking the consensus among EU member states that only a product authorized by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will be used in the centralized EU system.
On Sunday, Schmidt was joined by Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, who was also stabbed with a Chinese drug. He wrote on social media that he said that if the Russian and Chinese vaccines were not available in Hungary, the country would be in big trouble. However, critics say that by bypassing the EU system, the government is taking a huge health and legal risk. In contrast, the fact that, as a result of the two additional sources, there are many more doses of vaccine available in Hungary than in other countries.
More, but what
As of the last days of February, Hungary had obtained 18.3 doses of vaccine per 100 inhabitants, according to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). This is 50 percent ahead of Denmark, the best-served EU member state, which can show 12 doses per 100 inhabitants. On this basis, Chancellor Gergely Gulyás promised that more people would be vaccinated in the next two weeks than before.
Viktor Orbán justified the deviation from the EU procedure by claiming that it was too slow, but EU transport data shows that Hungary is relatively well supplied with vaccines within the EU system, that is, it is not among the Member States that have been almost completely exhausted. his actions. He has a total of nearly 880,000 doses of Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford / AstraZeneca, of which he used just under 640,000, an efficiency of 73 percent, according to ECDC data. There are a total of 16 EU Member States that have performed better. According to the Financial Times, by February 24, almost 720,000 doses had been inserted in Hungarians (meaning fewer people due to the two-stage vaccines).
It is a political question
The origin of vaccines in Hungary is a political question, Péter Krekó, director of the Political Capital research institute, told the British business newspaper. It is part of Viktor Orbán’s Eurosceptic policy to whip Brussels while praising Russia and China. The Russian Sputnik V vaccine has been shown to be effective in clinical trials and has been praised by the prestigious medical journal Lanchet, recalls the Financial Times, we do not have similar data on the Sinopharm vaccine. Furthermore, in the Hungarian vaccination process, it is administered for the first time to the elderly, for whom the available information is especially incomplete.
We don’t know if this vaccine is good for the elderly or not, Ferenc Falus, Hungary’s chief medical officer, told the British business newspaper between 2007 and 2010. We haven’t seen it hurt, but we don’t know if it’s effective either. Meanwhile, as a result of the government’s communication campaign, the propensity for vaccination has increased from 15% in December to 40%. On average, 27 percent of Hungarians are willing to accept the Chinese product, compared to 45 percent in the Fidesz voting field.
University professor Béla Merkely, a renowned expert on the pandemic, told the British business newspaper that if Hungary depended only on EU-authorized vaccines, we would talk about who would not get the vaccine even a year from now. The woman at the beginning of the article, Marianne Schmidt, says she doesn’t care that Sinopharm has not been approved in the EU if, as a result, she can visit her one-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter. He is glad that he was allowed to enter Hungary, if 30 million Chinese were vaccinated with it, he does not think he has any problem with that.
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