Hungary hails Sinopharm COVID-19 shot as new infections hit a record high
- "By ordering vaccines also from the East, we have been able to vaccinate about half a million more people (than relying only on shipments from the West)," Gergely Gulyas.
- A delivery of 450,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccines on Thursday took shipments from China to 1 million doses.
BUDAPEST: Hungary said on Thursday it was paying the equivalent of about $37.5 per dose for Chinese company Sinopharm's COVID-19 vaccine, but hailed its importance to its inoculation campaign as it reported a record rise in new infections.
After criticising the slowness of the European Union's vaccination programme, Hungary broke ranks by ordering the Sinopharm shot and doses of Russia's Sputnik V vaccine although neither has been granted regulatory approval in the EU.
A senior government official underlined the two vaccines' importance for Hungary as the latest data showed a record 8,312 new coronavirus infections in the last 24 hours, with 172 deaths, though new lockdown measures were imposed on Monday.
"By ordering vaccines also from the East, we have been able to vaccinate about half a million more people (than relying only on shipments from the West)," Gergely Gulyas, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's cabinet chief, told a briefing.
A delivery of 450,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccines on Thursday took shipments from China to 1 million doses.
Gulyas said the government was paying 63 euros - or $75.28 - for two doses of the Sinopharm vaccine.
That works out at just over $37.5 per dose, considerably more than the cost of a dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech or AstraZeneca vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency.
Hungary is paying $19.90 for two doses of Sputnik V, Gulyas said. That is roughly in line with prices cited elsewhere for the Russian vaccine.
Gulyas said the government would publish the procurement contracts for the Russian and Chinese vaccines within 24 hours, and that Hungary would ask the European Commission to make vaccine purchase contracts public as well.
Hungary had given a first dose of a vaccine to 1.149 million people as of Thursday.
Orban and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis were due to go to Israel on Thursday to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss policies to fight COVID-19.
Israel is a leader of the world's vaccination drive. Israeli authorities have not said publicly what they paid for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine but one official said on condition of anonymity it was paying "around twice the price abroad."
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.