A political agreement has been reached in which Hungary will receive the technology needed to produce the Russian Sputnik-V coronavirus vaccine for the National Vaccine Factory currently under construction, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó announced in Moscow on Thursday.
According to Szijjártó, the head of the ministry said after his talks with the Russian Minister of Health Mikhail Murashko that Hungary has been particularly good at establishing a high level of health cooperation with Russia. As he said, this allowed the government to buy the vaccine needed to protect the health and lives of one million people, which significantly contributed to Hungary carrying out the fastest vaccination campaign in Europe in the spring.
“We have now agreed to take cooperation on vaccines to a new, higher dimension,” Szijjártó announced after a political agreement was reached in Moscow on Thursday on this year’s technology transfer for the production of Sputnik.
He emphasized that the demand for the Russian vaccine is high worldwide, so Hungary has a strong economic interest in taking part in the production of the preparation and thus in entering the global market, suggesting that Hungary is also going to receive an export license for the Russian vaccine.
Mikhail Murasko informed Péter Szijjártó that the World Health Organization (WHO) pace for recognizing the Sputnik vaccine was accelerating. The Russian government will sign an agreement with the organization on Wednesday, on the basis of which this procedure will be conducted.
“Hungary has gained positive experience with the use of the Russian vaccine and is happy to provide data on this in the WHO (approval) process,” Szijjártó said.
He announced that a meeting of the Hungarian-Russian Joint Economic Committee, co-chaired by Mikhail Murasko, had been convened by the end of November and that the details of the production of Sputnik in Hungary would be worked out there.
