Hungarian private healthcare provider offers coronavirus vaccines for less than €100?

There is a Hungarian private healthcare provider called Nemzetközi Oltóközpont Kft. (International Vaccination Centre Ltd.) that offers a sort of reservation for coronavirus vaccines. Since Gergely Gulyás from the Hungarian Government said in February that they would not like private companies to sell the vaccines, there is currently an ongoing investigation of whether it is an unfair commercial practice and that the patients are informed properly.

According to Növekedés, the private healthcare provider has been receiving reservations for the vaccine for a couple of months now. According to the available information, the price of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is HUF 28,000, which is even less than €100. Depending on the exchange rate, it costs around €77 in total. Index asked how the price totals up.

This includes the two doses (HUF 10,000 / € 27.4 each), the price of administering the vaccine (HUF 1,500 / € 4.1 each) and the cost of the reservation itself (HUF 5,000 / € 13.7).

The news portal also found that the European Union obtains the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for € 15.5 meaning that the promised vaccine cost would be nearly twice as much as what the EU pays for their citizens’ vaccines.

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According to previous information, there has already been a procedure conducted against the company; their website had to be remodelled as the result, says Növekedés. The new investigation conducted by the Hungarian Department of Consumer Protection is aiming at finding out whether the practice of selling vaccines for people is unfair commercial practice or not and that those who have a reservation are informed well enough.

“Even if deliveries start earlier, we think that it would be unacceptable and unethical to vaccinate young and middle-aged people who do not belong to the risk group while there are still people waiting for the vaccine [from the government]. Just as everyone else, we also hope that the vaccination of the main risk group would have been finished by March 15, but it did not happen and this delay also affects us,”

– said the company in question. They also highlighted that anyone who wishes to cancel their reservation will get their money back.

There are several things that need to be mentioned about this case: Növekedés says that private healthcare providers can only sell and administer vaccines that have a full permission licence. Since there is a pandemic going on, many vaccines only received temporary licences and that means that currently, only the state healthcare can administer them. Moreover, the private healthcare provider’s statement makes it clearer that they intend to only vaccinate non-risk group people after the Government finishes the vaccination of all the risk group patients i.e. the elderly and people with underlying illness.

The company hopes that the investigation concludes that they can continue their business, as nothing has changed in their conduct since the previous procedure.

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Source: Növekedés.hu, Index.hu