Hungary began vaccinating hospital staff on Saturday hours after receiving its first delivery of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus jabs and ahead of most EU countries.
Vaccinations in most of the 27 EU countries were expected to begin on Sunday, after regulators approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on December 21.
"The first shipment is of utmost importance to frontline healthcare staff fighting the coronavirus," Janos Szlavik, infections expert at the South Pest Central hospital Budapest, which administered the first jab, told Hungarian newswire MTI.
"I have been waiting a long time to get it as my ability to work safely and calmly depends on it," Adrienne Kertesz, a doctor and the first Hungarian to receive the vaccine, told the M1 news channel.
The first consignment of 4,850 vaccination doses was received early Saturday at the Hungarian border with Austria, said a government spokesperson Zoltan Kovacs on Twitter.
The doses were being distributed to five vaccination centres and staff at the centres would receive the jab on Sunday, said Miklos Kasler, another government minister.
More vaccine consignments are due to arrive in Hungary in coming weeks, with a mass rollout for the population to take place in the first half of 2021, according to MTI.
More than 8,900 coronavirus-related deaths had been recorded by Saturday.