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BUDAPEST, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Hungary will on Wednesdaybecome the first European Union country to start inoculatingpeople with Chinese company Sinopharm's COVID-19 vaccine.

The government said on its coronavirus information page onFacebook that Sinopharm shots would be administered for thefirst time as part of its vaccination campaign, which began inDecember using the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Hungary has also purchased doses of Russia's Sputnik whichalong with the Sinopharm vaccine has not been granted regulatoryapproval in the EU.

The right-wing government, which has been critical of theslowness of the EU's vaccination programme, said in January ithad reached a deal buy 5 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccineand the first 550,000 doses arrived in Budapest last week.

New COVID-19 infections have started rising rapidly inHungary in a third wave of the pandemic.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is eager to reopen theeconomy, wants to accelerate the inoculation programme afterdelays in Western drugmakers' deliveries of the vaccinesapproved by the EU.

Hungary's programme also includes the vaccines developed byU.S. company Moderna and Anglo-Swedish firm AstraZeneca. The latter is used in Hungary to inoculate people agedbetween 18 and 59 who are suffering from chronic diseases.

"In the next few days we can make a huge step forward ininoculations thanks to the Chinese vaccine," Istvan Gyorgy, headof the government's vaccination workgroup told reporters.

"This means that within a week, the number of those who havereceived a vaccine could grow to over 800,000."

Hoping to boost public trust in the Chinese vaccine,government officials have pointed out that neighbouring Serbia,which has a large ethnic Hungarian minority, has been using theSinopharm shots for weeks.

As of Tuesday, Hungary had reported 407,274 coronaviruscases since the start of the pandemic, with 14,450 deaths.(Reporting by Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves, Editing byTimothy Heritage)