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Hungary Rushes As EU Nations Receive COVID Vaccines

By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News reporting from Budapest, Hungary

(Worthy News) – Hungary rushed to be the first European Union state to vaccinate people against the coronavirus, amid a rising death toll. Besides Hungary, batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 jab arrived across the EU as authorities prepared to administer the first shots to the most vulnerable people.

Authorities said Hungary started vaccinating healthcare workers against the coronavirus a day earlier than the other member states. The EU had planned to start the vaccinations in a coordinated effort on Sunday. But Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has made clear on several occasions that he doesn’t want to take directives from Brussels.

Hungary received the first shipment of coronavirus vaccines Saturday morning. But that will be enough to inoculate 4,875 people.

Similar or slightly bigger doses were distributed across the 27 nation bloc, explained the president of the EU’s executive European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. “Vaccination against COVID-19 is beginning across the European Union. The vaccine has been made available at the same to all EU countries. And people will start taking the vaccine in Athens, in Rome in Helsinki, in Sofia, you just name it,” Von der Leyen said in a video message.

“Very soon, we will have more vaccines once they are proven to be safe and effective. And the European Union has secured enough doses for our whole population 450 million and we also for neighbors like Iceland or Norway,” she added.

But she suggests that the vaccine deliveries may not mark the immediate end of restrictive coronavirus measures such as social distancing, wearing masks, or curfews. “Vaccination will help us to get our normal lives back, gradually,” she said. “Once enough people have been vaccinated, we can start traveling, meeting our friends and family again, and have normal holidays which we all long for,” she stressed. However, she warned: “Until then, we have to continue being careful. We need to protect ourselves and our loved ones from the virus.”

BRITAIN’S VACCINE

Earlier this month, Britain became the first country in the world to roll out the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech. However, the Christmas cheer was overshadowed by some fear after a more contagious coronavirus variant was first identified in Britain.

Several companies with authorized vaccines or therapeutic drugs for covid-19—including Pfizer/BioNTech and others—offered some hope. They said they were either doing tests or already had data showing their treatments should be effective against the coronavirus’s new form.

That was good news, for instance, France, which has confirmed the first case in the country of the more contagious coronavirus variant. In France, the first vaccines arrived at a dispatch facility in the French city of Nanterre as part of a European Union rollout Saturday.

They came as the French health ministry said a French citizen in the central town of Tours was infected with the more contagious coronavirus variant after arriving from London on December 19.

The ministry said he was “asymptomatic and currently self-isolating at home.”

HOPEFUL MOMENT

Despite setbacks, authorities claim the rollout of vaccines marks a moment of hope for Europe. That includes some of the world’s earliest and worst-hit virus hot spots, such as Italy and Spain, and others, like the Czech Republic. Altogether, the 27 EU member states say they have seen at least 16 million cases of the coronavirus and more than 336,000 related deaths.

There is also concern about former Soviet satellite states such as Belarus. A wave of COVID-19 cases has reportedly engulfed prisons packed with people in custody for demonstrating against the nation’s long-time president Alexander Lukashenko.

At least some of the protesters who contracted the coronavirus while incarcerated accuse authorities of neglecting or even encouraging infections.

Back in Hungary, there was at least some cheer amid a gloomy holiday season as vaccines arrived under Budapest’s police escort. They will be given first to healthcare workers who deal with rapidly spreading cases. Hungarian head physician Adrienne Kertész was among the first to receive the vaccine. “I waited long to receive this vaccine. Now I can work in the hospital without being afraid to be infected with COVID-19,”
she said.

As of Saturday, Hungary had reported 315,362 COVID-19 cases with 8,951 deaths. More than 6,000 people are still in hospital with COVID-19, straining the underfunded healthcare system.