France To Launch Covid-19 Campaign In January
Source: France24
France said Tuesday it was preparing to kick off a nationwide Covid vaccination campaign in January when it hopes virus shots will be approved and available. The government is worried that millions of French people will refuse coronavirus shots, even after a vaccine was found to be nearly 95 percent effective on Monday, bringing optimism to a world facing surging infections and a raft of new stay-at-home orders.
US biotech firm Moderna on Monday claimed 94.5 percent effectiveness in a clinical vaccine trial with more than 30,000 participants, after US pharmaceutical company Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said last week that their vaccine was 90 percent effective. According to the World Health Organization, some 42 "candidate vaccines" are currently 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," government spokesman Gabriel Attal told France 2 television. The growing vaccine scepticism in France could however confound a public health campaign on immunization.
Only 59 percent of French people are prepared to get vaccinated, according to an Ipsos opinion poll published in September, compared with 74 percent worldwide. "My fear is that not enough French people will get vaccinated," Prime Minister Jean Castex said at the weekend...
Read more: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20201117-france-to-launch-covid-19-vaccine-campaign-in-january
