Joanna Rossiter Joanna Rossiter

Hungary’s vaccine strategy risks showing up the EU

(Photo: Getty)

You have to admire Hungary’s chutzpah. Not only has it bypassed Brussels to pursue its own vaccine procurement strategy, it is also backing two of the most controversial horses in the race: Russia’s Sputnik V and China’s Sinopharm jab. It has just secured enough Sinopharm doses to vaccinate 250,000 people a month while its Sputnik V deal will mean 1 million Hungarians are vaccinated – a tenth of the population. The Sputnik V vaccine may start being rolled out as soon as next week.

Hungary’s strategy may appear reckless but its hand has been somewhat forced by EU policy, which prohibitively states that individual member states may only enter into negotiations with vaccine suppliers who are not in talks with the EU. It’s ironic, then, that Germany is now following Hungary’s lead and seeking to secure the Sputnik V jab, subject to EMA approval.

Viktor Orban started the vaccine race as an outlier but he is now setting the pace for other EU nations. He was one of the first global leaders to enter into talks with Russia about Sputnik V, much to the chagrin of EU officials, who, along the rest of the international community, raised questions about the rigour of the Russian testing process. These concerns have now been countered by a February paper in the Lancet that showed the vaccine had both high efficacy and safety. The Czech prime minister, Andrej Babiš, recently announced that if the EMA did not approve other vaccine candidates soon, he would consider adopting the Hungarian approach and approaching Russia and China directly.

Now that its gamble on Sputnik seems to have paid off, Hungary’s independent streak is only going to grow. Indeed, the government plans to pass legislation that will automatically approve any jab that has been given to more than 1 million people worldwide.

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