Hungary expecting Russian and Chinese vaccines

Hungary announced on Thursday it expects to receive 500,000 doses of the Chinese Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine next week and will begin administering them as soon as possible.

Gergely Gulyas, the Head of the Hungarian Prime Minister's Office, said the Sinopharm vaccine would undergo assessment by Hungary's National Public Health Center before being put into circulation.

According to Gulyas, China's Sinopharm is the safest vaccine given it "has already been administered to more than 30 million people in the world".

Hungary, which has been critical of the European Union's sluggish vaccine rollout, also expects 200,000 doses of the Russian vaccine Sputnik V to arrive this month.

Doctors in Budapest were instructed this week to choose patients under the age of 75 with no chronic health conditions to receive the first round of Sputnik V jabs.

Gulyas said that Hungary's government would introduce a document certifying individuals that have either received two doses of a vaccine or have recovered from the virus.

Those who can produce COVID-19 antibody tests will also be eligible for the document.

Gulyas did not give details on what additional rights might be extended to document holders.

In the past 24 hours 1,852 new coronavirus infections were detected in Hungarian citizens, bringing the number of infected people to 81,297.

Some 3,799 patients with coronavirus have been hospitalised in Hungary - 299 of whom are on ventilators.

Officials said 97 patients died in the last 24 hours, bringing the number of deaths related to coronavirus to 13,444.

According to officials, so far in Hungary, 294,624 people have been vaccinated, of which 117,368 have already received their second dose.