France on Tuesday said it has been bracing for novel coronavirus vaccination campaign across the country, which is planned to start in January as it expects virus shots will be approved and available by the authorities, reported AFP.

The government frets that citizens of France will disapprove vaccine doses, even after a vaccine was found to be approximately 95% effective on Monday, bringing hopes to a world facing increasing infections and a raft of new stay-at-home directives.

US biotech firm Moderna on Monday claimed 94.5% effectiveness in a clinical vaccine trial with over 30,000 participants, after US pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said last week that their vaccine was 90% effective.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), at present, some 42 “candidate vaccines” are undergoing clinical trials.

“We’re preparing a vaccination campaign to be ready the moment that a vaccine is approved by European and national health authorities so we can launch a vaccine immediately,” said Gabriel Attal, government spokesman.

The developing scepticism over vaccine in France could, however, confound a public health campaign on immunisation. Only 59% of French people are prepared to get vaccinated, according to an Ipsos opinion poll published in September, in regard with 74% worldwide.

“My fear is that not enough French people will get vaccinated,” Prime Minister Jean Castex said at the weekend. France has budgeted 1.5 billion euros ($1.77 billion) to buy vaccines in 2021, said Attal.

Noting that the European Medicines Agency said it may be ready to authorise a first vaccine by the end of the year, Attal said France had placed options on “several hundreds of millions” of doses from numerous pharma organisations.

The final choice will be for the vaccine “that gives us the best chance to contain the pandemic” without presenting “even the slightest risk” for health, he added.

According to a tally, the novel coronavirus has taken the lives of at least 1,319,561 people worldwide since the transmission emerged in China last December.

Globally, at least 54,493,680 cases of coronavirus have been recorded.

In France alone, around 33,500 people are currently in hospital with COVID-19, of whom nearly 5,000 are in intensive care.

French daily case numbers have been falling since a new nationwide lockdown was imposed on October 30, but the government admonished it was too early to claim victory.

France has reported more than 45,000 COVID-19 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.