Hungary looks east for coronavirus vaccines

By Peter MURPHY (AFP)
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1 hour earlier in World

An Aeroflot shipment of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine to EU member Hungary last week has sparked brand-new criticism in the house and abroad of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s go-it-alone policies.

” We are the very first European country to get such a sample,” stated Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto in a video revealing the aircraft touching down at Budapest airport.

An initial 10 doses were handed over for local testing, with large-scale deliveries and possibly mass production by a Hungarian company possible next year if it shows safe and efficient, according to Budapest.

Hungarian doctors and professionals will quickly study the production of Sputnik V in Russia, Szijjarto informed a press conference with Russian health minister Mikhail Murashko in Budapest on Friday.

Their visit would enable a faster decision on approval of the vaccine in Hungary, stated Szijjarto.

While Hungary has actually reserved possible future vaccines from both Europe and the United States, it is also in contact with Chinese and Israeli designers, according to Budapest.

” Nobody can say for specific when we’ll get a vaccine or when it’ll be mass-produced, (for this reason) Hungary must also want to the east and cooperate with Russia and China,” a foreign ministry official Tamas Menczer stated this week.

Menczer implicated critics of the procurement plans of representing the interests of pharmaceutical multinationals and “the Brussels lobby scene”.

– ‘Federal government propaganda’ –

The European Medicines Agency (EMA), charged with supervising vaccine approval in the European Union, has yet to examine the Russian drug, which Moscow stated this week showed 95 percent effectiveness in latest trials.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban is already at loggerheads with Brussels

JOHANNA GERON, POOL/AFP/File

Previously this month, EU officials cautioned– without pointing out Hungary– that marketing vaccines unauthorised by Brussels would break Europe’s vaccine technique.

” If you were to market such a vaccine on European territory, then certainly, we would have to do something about it in order to guarantee that these guidelines are respected,” said a European Commission representative Vivian Loonela, without supplying additional detail.

Hungary and Poland are currently at loggerheads with Brussels over the EU’s long-term budget plan. And Hungary’s maverick method could stimulate a new rift.

But Orban’s domestic critics are also wary about the arrival of Sputnik V.

” Maybe it will be safe and efficient, however this is less about the infection or the vaccine, and more about federal government propaganda telling us that, when in trouble, the Russians are pals who help us initially,” said Gabriella Lantos, a health professional with the New World opposition celebration.

On the other hand, Hungarian pro-government media are in favour of Sputnik V and criticise Brussels for being cautious.

While Orban insists that his diplomacy of opening towards the east is practical, it is a technique that has actually seen him accused of being Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “Trojan horse” in the EU and NATO.

Orban brushes off such claims and insists his country’s geographic position on the EU’s eastern fringe forces cooperation with bigger powers.

Tamas Denes, a spokesman for medical professionals’ trade union Reszasz, cautiously welcomed the arrival of Sputnik V, however admitted that “it is difficult not to see politics in it”.

However, “declining Sputnik even if it was developed in Russia is not a good concept either, it is good to have options,” Denes told AFP.

” I wish for safe vaccines despite the country of origin,” he said.

– Vaccine scepticism –

However, convincing the Hungarian public to be inoculated might show challenging.

An Ipsos study last month revealed willingness in Hungary to take a Covid-19 vaccine if available was amongst the lowest in Europe, ahead just of Poland and Russia.

A “unsafe” prospective side-effect of accepting Sputnik V might be that it might “sustain existing scepticism about vaccines, causing public health threats,” according to analyst Peter Kreko of the Political Capital think-tank.

With the EU having signed advanced purchasing agreements with western developers for numerous countless dosages of possible future vaccines, Kreko says it is still more likely that Hungary will choose western inoculations.

” But if there is a hold-up in a vaccine from the EU, the government might approve Sputnik and paint itself as saviours of the population, while raising stress with Brussels,” he informed AFP.

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