Hungary renounces Russian vaccine against COVID-19

Orban had sent experts to Russia and China to monitor the development of vaccines, and Hungary had also received a sample of the Russian vaccine, Sputnik V.

“We know that the Russian vaccine is good, but there is not enough doses and it probably won't, because they have limited production capacity”, Orban said on Sunday, during an interview for Hungarian public radio.

In contrast to Sputnik V, “Chinese formula is more promising and appears to be ready faster in large quantities”, Orban said.

The “ideal would be if you could choose if you wanted to vaccinate with one of the vaccines produced in the West or with Chinese vaccine”, he said.

In November last year, Hungary became the first European state to accept a sample of the Russian vaccine.

Russian and Western experts have raised their concerns about the vaccine, which has not been approved for use by the European drug regulator.

Orban said he was unhappy with the dynamics of buying vaccines from the EU.

“There have been products that were faster accessible in Canada, the United Kingdom and Israel than in the EU”, he said.

Orban's recent criticisms for the EU come after last week he failed to comply with the bloc's approach to co-ordinating anti-coronavirus vaccine.

After Hungary received doses of the vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech on December 26th, it immediately launched the vaccine, and not as the EU countries had agreed, so that the vaccine campaign could begin one day later, on December 27th.