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Hungary approves Indian CoviShield and China’s CanSino vaccine for emergency use – UPDATE
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Hungary is the first European Union (EU) country to approve for emergency use China’s CanSino Biologics coronavirus vaccine and CoviShield, the Indian version of the AstraZeneca shot, the Hungarian surgeon general said on Monday.
New infections are surging in Hungary in a third wave of the pandemic, even as vaccine import and usage rates are among the highest in the EU with the country using Chinese and Russian vaccines as well as Western ones.
Cecília Müller, speaking at the daily press conference of the coronavirus operative board, said she hoped that a greater choice of vaccines would help the country’s vaccination programme, adding that “the jab is the only way out of the epidemic”.
Müller said that
1.59 million Hungarians, 16 percent of the population, had received at least their first shot, but warned that the third wave of the pandemic was “still extremely dynamic”, with the highly infectious British coronavirus variant causing 90 percent of the new cases.
If both new vaccines are also approved for mass use by the National Health Centre, Hungary will have seven sources to procure vaccines from. It was unclear when and in what quantity Hungary planned to deploy the newly authorised vaccines, or how it planned to buy them.