COVID-19 vaccination in Hungary

COVID-19 vaccination in Hungary

Date	December 27, 2020 (2020-12-27) – present
Location	Hungary
Cause	COVID-19 pandemic in Hungary

COVID-19 vaccination in Hungary is an ongoing immunization campaign against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), in response to the ongoing pandemic in the country.

Background

Reports in March 2021 stated that Hungary was the first country in the EU to "begin using China’s Sinopharm and Russia’s Sputnik V vaccines, even as polling showed that public trust in non-EU approved vaccines was low". The European Commission's Vaccine Passport plan excluded the Sputnik and Sinopharm products because they were not "EU authorized vaccines". One suggestion to resolve that issue was for "Russian and Chinese vaccine producers submit their products to the EMA for testing and authorization". In end March 2021, Hungary also granted emergency use licenses to two more vaccines, CanSino (from China) and Covishield (produced by Serum Institute of India).

Vaccines on order

Vaccine	Approval	Deployment
Oxford–AstraZeneca	Yes	Yes
Sinopharm	Yes	Yes
Pfizer–BioNTech	Yes	Yes
Moderna	Yes	Yes
Johnson & Johnson	Yes	Yes
Sputnik V	Yes	No
CanSino	Yes	No
Novavax	Pending	No
Sanofi–GSK	Pending	No
CureVac	Pending	No
Valneva	Pending	No

Goverment response

On 17 March, the Surgeon General announced that the National Safety Laboratory of National Health Security Center had successfully isolated COVID-19 from a Hungarian patient's sample, which it could use for researching vaccines from a Hungarian patient's sample, to be used for the researches and production of new vaccine in Hungary. A consortium founded by Immunology Department at Faculty of Sciences of Eötvös Loránd University, Biological Institute at Science Faculty of University of Pécs, Richter Gedeon and ImmunoGenes is involved in international biotechnological developments. Imre Kacskovics, leader of Immunology Department of ELTE said, product currently under preparation at the first phase it won't be a vaccine, it provides only passive immunity, but it won't be able to prepare the body to fight against virus. Some days after the successful isolation Bioinformatic Research Team of Szentágothay János Research Center at University of Pécs and the virologist experts of the university found the genome of new SARS-CoV-2 human coronavirus available in Hungary.