Who is going to vaccinate foreign citizens living in Hungary?

We received many questions regarding the issue, sent by foreign citizens living, studying, or working in Hungary, after we published articles about how the government plans to vaccinate Hungarian citizens. The Civic Response Movement – one of the newest political communities in Hungary – collected the answers regarding the issue which you may find below.

According to the Facebook page of the movement, they called the information line of vakcinainfo.gov.hu, a government-run website on which one can register for the vaccine. They were told that those who are not Hungarian citizens but have a social security number (in Hungarian: TAJ-szám) could register on the page

and will receive the vaccine according to the vaccination plan of the government.

However, those foreign citizens who do not have that number will not be able to register on the website and will not receive a vaccine from the Hungarian government. The Civic Response Movement wrote that it remains a question whether the government will allow them to be vaccinated later, or they will have to go back to their home country to be inoculated.

• New shipment of Pfizer vaccine to arrive next week
• Hungarian virologist: “The new coronavirus mutation is probably already in Hungary”

If they do not want to go home to get the vaccine, they can order it. That is because some of the private companies already started to sell them. For example, 24.hu reported that the International Vaccination Centre in Budapest

 has already been selling the preemptive right for the vaccine since August 20 for HUF 5,000 (EUR 14).

They told the Hungarian portal that by November 28, they received 4,997 orders, and as soon as they get the first vaccines, they will start distributing them based on the time of order. However, 24.hu said that Pfizer said before that their vaccine would only be accessible at official state vaccination sites, which means that they will not (yet) sell it to private clinics, companies, or pharmacies.

As we reported before, the Hungarian government released an excerpt of its vaccination plan last Saturday. Based on that, those will receive the vaccine who are Hungarian citizens above 18 and have a social security number. Furthermore, those who caught the virus in the last six months will not receive a vaccine, no matter whether they did or did not have symptoms. As a result,

  those who were infected in the first wave will be inoculated, 

while those who caught the virus during the second wave will not. The institution wrote that they had to rank people in order of priority because the vaccination process has two pillars: volunteering and risk factor.