Hungary began injecting citizens with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine on Friday, becoming the first country in the European Union to administer a coronavirus vaccination that has yet to be tested and approved by the bloc’s regulators.
With Hungary’s economy suffering and national elections looming next year, embracing such vaccines is part of the government’s strategy to do everything in its power to fight the coronavirus, after a series of missteps make it possible made to spread in Hungary.
Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orban’s decision to move forward with the ambitious vaccination plan comes after the European Union’s own response to vaccine distribution lags behind the United States, Israel and Britain.
Mr Orban has few options for reviving the Hungarian economy as he is against the provision of meaningful emergency assistance to citizens and businesses and is very much likely to bet the entire country will be vaccinated in view of the elections next year.
“We have turned away from the extreme temptation to return to an aid-based economy during the crisis,” Mr Orban said at the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry last week. “Many have said that aid should be distributed during a crisis. Perhaps that is appropriate in some countries under certain circumstances. I don’t see Hungary as one of these countries. “
But his embrace of vaccines not yet to be approved by the EU – Sputnik V, as well as a Chinese one made by Sinopharm that is expected to be rolled out in the near future – has also provided an opportunity to score political points against what Mr. Orban sees the run-up to the 2022 elections as an overbearing and ineffective European Union.
“My opinion is that what I need, and what the Hungarian people need, is not an explanation, but a vaccine, and if it is not from Brussels, it must come from elsewhere,” Mr Orban said in January. “It cannot be the case that Hungarian people die, because the procurement of vaccines in Brussels is slow. This is simply unacceptable. “
Mr Orban has been at odds with the European Union over Hungary’s harsh policy on the treatment of migrants, which is considered illegal by the European Court of Justice, as well as issues such as the rule of law, corruption and media freedom.
Critics argue that by pushing forward with vaccines not approved in the European Union, Mr. Orban is undermining the bloc’s joint vaccination program, which coordinates orders and distribution.
“Orban is using the vaccine to play an insidious political game to weaken and break the bloc,” said Andrzej Halicki, a Polish MEP.
“Russia is using a dumping tactic and trying to enter the European market by offering the Hungarians a lower price for their vaccine, and Orban is trying to destroy the common vaccination strategy under the pretext of this lower price,” he said.
For now, the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has avoided direct criticism of Mr Orban’s approach.
“If a member state wants to sign contracts with companies not covered by our vaccine strategy, they have the right to do so,” a spokesman for the committee said on Wednesday.
But, he said, Hungary would also be liable for the use of the unapproved vaccines. “This differs from the EMA authorization, where liability remains with the manufacturer,” he said, referring to the European Medicines Agency, the EU regulator.
While many EU members have voiced their frustration with the bloc’s slow tendering procedures, Hungary is the only one to break with the collective strategy so far.
Neither the Russian nor the Chinese manufacturers have applied for an ongoing review or marketing authorization from the European Medicines Agency. But Russian scientists have taken formal scientific advice from the EU regulator, a move seen as a precursor to gathering the right data and documentation to request a revision.
Sputnik V only received its first peer-reviewed feedback this month in the scientific publication The Lancet, which indicated it was both safe and effective. The Sinopharm vaccine has been approved for use in China, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, but the company has not yet published detailed results from its Phase 3 trial.
Other EU countries have begun to consider Sputnik V since it received its positive review in The Lancet, EU officials say, and that could aid in its approval by the bloc. Despite his complaints about the delays in the European Union’s vaccine mobilization, which only came to light in December, Mr Orban’s strategy became clear as early as November, when his Foreign Minister announced the government was in talks with Russia about import and possibly production. , Sputnik V.
Peter Kreko, the director of Political Capital, a research institute in Budapest, said Mr. Orban was now motivated by a desire to appear faster and more efficient than the European Union.
While there is a strong desire to get the economy back on track, Mr Kreko said, the Prime Minister is also working to restore the image caused by his government’s failed response to the pandemic and the high death rates in Hungary.
Dr. Ferenc Falus, Hungary’s former Chief Medical Officer, said the public health response is failing on several levels. From the outset of the pandemic, he said, systemic contact tracking problems made it completely inefficient. Not offering free mass testing contributed to a skewed understanding of the virus’s prevalence, he said.
The relaxation of restrictions between August and November, said Dr. Falus, “was a big mistake because it resulted in the unbelievably high peak in mortality.”
Hungary has registered 383,735 cases of the coronavirus, with 13,543 deaths, according to a database from the New York Times, although experts believe the number of deaths from the virus is much higher.
While Mr Orban and his government have played out the merits of the Russian and Chinese vaccines, many Hungarians are still wary of those shots, Mr Kreko said.
He cited a recent study by the Hungarian pollster Median that showed that twice as many Hungarians prefer Western vaccines over Sputnik, and three times as many as Sinopharm.
He said waiting for these vaccines to receive approval from the European Medicines Agency could increase the public’s openness to their use.
“That would not fit into Orban’s strategy because he wants to show how slow and incompetent Brussels is, while the Hungarian government is doing much better,” he said.
The Hungarian Chamber of Physicians, a leading medical association, has urged the government and domestic regulators to approve vaccines only after transparent compliance with drug safety rules and testing in accordance with the standards of the European Medicines Agency.
Like other countries in the European Union, Hungary’s economy was hammered by lockdowns after the coronavirus spread rapidly in the spring, with the services sector particularly hard hit.
“About the same thing happened everywhere,” said Gergely Tardos, chief economist at OTP Bank. “Hungary was more or less lucky as the industry recovered in the third quarter, but neither was tourism, restaurants and many services.”
Hardest hit were those in the off-book sector, as is typical in Hungary, particularly in small businesses, hospitality and tourism.
Tackling the illegal and semi-illegal employment of such individuals is a political landmine, said Zoltan Pogatsa, an economist at the University of Sopron.
Hospitality and tourism account for about 10 percent of the Hungarian economy and workforce, he said, and those who work informally would not be eligible for unemployment benefits, which are already low by EU standards and the shortest in the bloc.
Monika Pronczuk provided a report from Brussels.