Fijians have the constitutional right not to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and Government is not looking at making it compulsory, says Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.

However, he said, “there could be consequences from you exercising that right”.

“As said in Parliament, you have a constitutional right to refuse a medical treatment or medical procedure, that’s your right,” he said.

“So if your employer says that you cannot work here if you don’t get vaccinated, and you’ve chosen not to get vaccinated, you cannot then work there. “Obviously, it’s the people’s choice but people need to understand.

I don’t think a lot of people necessarily get that if we don’t achieve that number that we are supposed to as advised by Ministry of Health then we will continue to bleed.

“And it’s a very easy thing to achieve and the world is going that way, this is the new norm.

“If we get vaccinated we can go back to our lives in a form that would replicate somewhat similar to what we had prior to COVID-19.”

Health Ministry permanent secretary Dr James Fong says 80 per cent of eligible Fijians need to be vaccinated before COVID-19 restrictions can be relaxed.

He said so far, 299,202 Fijians had received one dose of the vaccine and 32,766 were already fully-vaccinated.