Hungarian govt defends vaccination programme and awaits further shipments of Sputnik V vaccines

The left wing’s anti-vaccination campaign is “just as unscrupulous as it looks”, and if they are capable of endangering people’s lives in the midst of a pandemic, then “they are capable of any grim action”, state secretary Csaba Dömötör said on public radio on Sunday.

Dömötör told Kossuth Radio experts agree that any vaccine is better than the coronavirus; regardless, the left wing’s anti-vaccination campaign is underway in more and more places.

The left wing has attacked the vaccine licencing process conducted by Hungarian experts on a number of occasions, it has collected signatures against certain vaccines, and DK leader Ferenc Gyurcsány and various mayors have sent letters to GPs asking them not to use some vaccines, he said.

He added that the same left wing that demanded restrictions be lifted two weeks earlier, is now calling healthcare leaders to account.

Dömötör said there were enough hospital beds and ventilators to manage the pandemic, but restrictions must remain in place to prevent frontline health-care workers from being burdened any further. He said the vaccination rollout is progressing well.

“We see the light at the end of the tunnel, but we still have a long way to go,” he added.

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On another front of the vaccination programme, Péter Szijjártó reported that further doses of vaccines will arrive this evening:

Some 250,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V Covid vaccine are expected to arrive in Hungary on Sunday evening, the foreign minister said.

Szijjártó said on Facebook that vaccination was the “only recipe for victory” in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. This requires vaccines and “the good news is that a Hungarian cargo aircraft has again set off on Sunday, and it is expected to return from Moscow tonight with 250,000 doses of Sputnik vaccine”, he added.

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, Szijjártó said.

That means a total of 680,000 doses of Russian vaccine will arrive in Hungary in less than two weeks’ time, Szijjártó added.

Source: MTI