Socialists request access to pandemic management documents in Hungary

Socialist MEP István Ujhelyi said on Tuesday he was requesting access to government documents on the handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Ujhelyi said on Facebook he was addressing letters to two ministers and the chief medical officer, Cecília Müller, saying the government’s actions to counter the economic and social effects of the coronavirus pandemic as well as its vaccine procurement were “insufficient”.

Ujhelyi, who also sits on the EP’s public health committee, noted that

Gergely Gulyás, the prime minister’s chief of staff, had published the contracts to purchase Chinese and Russian vaccines but had neglected to do the same for the logistics and delivery of the vaccines procured through the European Union.

Besides access to the government’s full inoculation strategy, Ujhelyi also requested access to the notes of the Hungarian member of the European Union’s steering committee set up to supervise the EU’s vaccine procurement.

He said he wanted to know the “list of experts who compiled the inoculation plan and the determined at-risk groups” in order to to gain an insight into the distribution of vaccines in the country.

Ujhelyi accused the government of putting the procurement of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine, an 55 billion forint (EUR 149.7m) transaction, into the hands “of a company with a murky past and without a professional background”.

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Source: MTI