PARIS (AFP)--France has ordered 94 million swine flu vaccine doses, stepping up its efforts to contain the pandemic after the World Health Organization warned it was unstoppable.

Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot announced the EUR1 billion order after a meeting of a French ministerial crisis cell late Wednesday, saying the vaccines would be delivered between October and January.

Sanofi-Pasteur SA is to provide 28 million doses, GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) 50 million and Novartis AG (NVS) 16 million. France also has an optional order for 28 million additional doses from Sanofi-Pasteur and 8 million from Novartis.

France has recorded more than 600 cases of A/H1N1 swine flu since the end of April, according to the public health monitoring agency, the INVS, but none has proved fatal.

Bachelot said experts were currently determining who should be given first access to the swine flu vaccine, with health professionals, pregnant women, children and the chronically ill expected to take priority. But she said the government aimed to offer vaccination to all who need it in the population of some 64 million people. Each person will receive two doses of the vaccine, several weeks apart.

Vaccination will be carried out in specially-designated centers, with the cost shared between the state health system and private health insurers.

From the end of next week, French pharmacists will also deliver free surgical masks and Tamiflu-style anti-viral tablets, both on prescription from a doctor.

The WHO said Monday a vaccine should be available as early as September, warning the pandemic was now "unstoppable," with more than 90,000 cases reported, including 429 deaths.

A U.S. study this week warned A/H1N1 could pick up genes from other flu strains that would make it both highly virulent and contagious, or acquire mutations enabling it to be resistant to Tamiflu.