Hungary has issued initial approval to two more COVID-19 vaccines not authorised by Europe’s medicines regulator, the country’s officials said on Monday.
The Hungarian medicines regulator gave emergency approval to Convidecia, developed by Chinese company CanSino Biologics and to Covishield, developed by the Serum Institute of India, Chief Medical Officer Cecilia Muller announced at an online press briefing.
“We are confident that with this increase in the range [of vaccines], we can also increase their quantity and provide the population with the opportunity to vaccinate as widely as possible,” Muller said.
Citing a third wave of Coronavirus, Muller said that the vaccines marked the “only way out of the pandemic”, adding that Hungary would continue to seek vaccine sources from allover the world.
The move brings the number of vaccines authorised in Hungary to seven, as the country has already given the nod to the jabs developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca/Oxford University, China’s Sinopharm, as well as Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.