A second delivery of China's Sinopharm vaccine has arrived in Hungary, the only European Union member state to use the jab so far. Around 450,000 doses landed in Budapest on Thursday taking the total number of doses delivered to one million. They will undergo inspection by authorities before being sent to vaccination centers.
This is the second of four batches that are expected by the end of May, amounting to 5 million doses in total. That is enough to inoculate a quarter of Hungary's population.
Hungary revealed it was paying $37.50 per dose for the Chinese company's vaccine and $9.95 per dose for the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine, adding it was publishing the purchase contracts to push for more transparency.
"Hungary's government stands for making vaccine contracts public," Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff Gergely Gulyas wrote on Facebook.
"We ask the European Commission that it also publish the contracts signed by Brussels," Gulyas added.
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Hungary is using five jabs against COVID-19, the highest number of any EU country, after choosing to supplement the EU's procurement process with vaccines from Russia and China.
Officials have criticized the slow pace of the EU's procurement process and chose not to wait for approval from the European Medicines Agency before using the additional vaccines.
A person being prepared to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in Hungary.
Hungarian regulators gave the Sputnik V and Sinopharm jabs the green light at the end of January. The government says the breadth of options is helping the country get ahead in its vaccination drive.
More than 10 percent of Hungary's population has received the first dose of a coronavirus vaccine, one of the highest rates in the EU. So far, the growing immunity hasn't halted the spread of the virus, although the profile of COVID-19 patients is increasingly younger.
The country's healthcare system is facing unprecedented strain, with record hospitalizations from the virus recorded this week.
Sinopharm vaccines doses arriving in Hungary./CGTN
Chief Medical Officer Cecilia Muller warned of an "extraordinary burden" on the healthcare system and said the situation was expected to get worse in the coming weeks.
Since the start of the pandemic, more than 16,000 people have died of the virus in Hungary, a country of just under ten million. The World Health Organisation says Central Europe is driving an upward trend in case numbers across the continent, following weeks of decline.
The Czech Republic has also asked China to send vials of the Sinopharm vaccine while Slovakia received its first batch of Sputnik V doses from Russia and is expected to start using them in the coming week.
Video editor: Andras Nagy