PM Orbán: Everyone who is registered can be vaccinated until Easter

If Hungary can begin using China’s Covid-19 vaccine then all those who have registered for a shot can be inoculated by Easter, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Friday.

In his regular interview to public broadcaster Kossuth Radio, Orbán said it was “good news” that some 700,000 people in Hungary are now protected against Covid-19, with 310,000 having received their first shots and 383,000 who are confirmed to have recovered from the disease.

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He noted, however, that the decline in new daily cases has come to a halt, with 99 deaths and 1,860 new infections recorded on Thursday.

A total of 3,828 people are hospitalised with Covid-19, 299 of them on a ventilator.

“The rules must remain in place,” the prime minister said, noting that the whole of Europe has seen similar trends in their Covid cases in recent days. Orbán attributed Hungary’s recent rise in cases to the spread of the UK variant of the virus.

He added, at the same time, that Hungary did not need to impose further restrictions to combat the epidemic, saying that the country now had enough vaccines to offset the rise in cases.

Orbán said that if Hungary could start vaccinating people with China’s Sinopharm jab, which he said would happen soon, all 2,448,000 people who have registered for a Covid shot could be inoculated by Easter.

By late May and early June, fully 6.8 million people could be vaccinated, he said, adding that this would mean Hungary would have 3.5 million more people inoculated than a country with a similar size and population.

People in Hungary are currently being vaccinated at 7,189 vaccination points, the prime minister said.

Orbán also noted that it was not yet known how long immunity lasts after a person has been vaccinated, saying the country needed to be prepared for the possibility that people will have to be vaccinated every 6-8 months. Hungary therefore has to be procuring vaccines on a continuous basis, he said.

“We need to have prowlers and scouts on the move all the time . and whenever it looks like a few thousand or hundred thousand vaccines fall off a truck, a Hungarian prowler has to be there to catch it,” Orbán said.

As regards the European Union’s vaccine procurement strategy, the prime minister said the business plan itself was sound, but the problem was that it was taking too long. “And those who are able to buy time can save lives, which is why Hungary needs the Chinese and Russian vaccines as well,” he said. “Those who waste time will lose lives.”

Concerning the Chinese vaccine, Orbán said Hungary’s public health authority had yet to assess the jab, adding, at the same time, that there was a good chance that it would be safe to use.

Put to him that many believe Hungary should wait for the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to approve the Sinopharm vaccine, Orbán said Hungary’s health experts were “at least as qualified” as any European expert, adding that he was more confident in the judgement of the Hungarian public health authority than in that of the Brussels-based body.