Hungary seeks COVID-19 vaccine certificate deals to allow travel -PM aide

Hungary's government has authorized its foreign minister to make bilateral agreements recognizing COVID-19 vaccine certificates that would allow citizens to travel among participating countries, the prime minister's chief of staff said on Thursday. Countries around the world are looking at a host of options to show proof of COVID-19 vaccinations to allow travel, although airports, border agencies, and airlines are worried there will be no clear global standard that will be accepted at all borders.

Hungary's government has authorized its foreign minister to make bilateral agreements recognizing COVID-19 vaccine certificates that would allow citizens to travel among participating countries, the prime minister's chief of staff said on Thursday.

Countries around the world are looking at a host of options to show proof of COVID-19 vaccinations to allow travel, although airports, border agencies, and airlines are worried there will be no clear global standard that will be accepted at all borders. Hungary, a country of 10 million, has been at the forefront of the European Union's (EU) inoculation drive thanks to the large-scale import of Russian and Chinese vaccines.

However, its COVID-19 death rate in terms of deaths per million population has recently been the highest in the world, a database on the website Worldometers.info shows. "The government has authorized the foreign minister to make bilateral agreements about recognizing vaccine certificates ... with all countries that are open to this," Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff Gergely Gulyas told an online briefing.

"We would like to have the rights linked to these certificates mutually recognized with these countries," Gulyas added without naming any countries in particular. Hungary is the only EU country to authorize and deploy Russian and Chinese shots before they have been approved by the bloc's drugs regulator. As of Tuesday, Hungary had received 3.5 million Sputnik V and Sinopharm vaccines and 3.6 million shots under the EU's procurement process, including from Pfizer/BioNtech, Moderna, and AstraZeneca.

As of Thursday, Hungary had inoculated 3.87 million people, representing nearly 40% of its population, while the number of total cases rose to 776,983 with 27,358 deaths. Gulyas added that Hungary expected to reach 4 million COVID-19 inoculations on Friday, meaning a further round of easing measures announced earlier could be implemented.

The measures include pushing back an 11 p.m. curfew to midnight, allowing indoor dining in restaurants, and reopening zoos, museums, cinemas, and libraries for those who have obtained vaccine certificates.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)