Hungary started inoculating healthcare workers with the first "token" delivery of the Pfizer vaccine last Saturday. Hungary will get a total of 4.4 million doses of the vaccine, which works using a messenger RNA (mRNA) sequence that contains the genetic instructions for the vaccinated person's own cells to produce the vaccine antigens and generate an immune response, in 2020-2021.
Krisztina Zsigmond, who heads the vaccine division of Pfizer's Hungarian unit, said Pfizer would deliver 50 million doses of the vaccine, globally, by year-end, and another 1.3 billion doses by the end of 2021.
The European Union has ordered 200 million doses of the vaccine with an option for a further 100 million doses, she added.
Pfizer Gyógyszerkereskedelmi managing director Péter Vereckei said the mRNA vaccine could be tweaked in response to virus variants within a period of just six weeks.
He noted that that the first patent for mRNA technology was filed by the Hungarian biochemist Katalin Karikó, who lives in the United States and has been working on the technology for 30 years.
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