The vaccination drive will continue because the vaccination will save lives, says Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Health and Medical Services Dr James Fong.

He was responding to queries on the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccines on the new highly dangerous and more contagious Indian variant of coronavirus that has been confirmed to be affecting Fijians in recent days.

Dr Fong said there have been concerns raised but it was important to note that the vaccine prevents people from hospitalisation, severe disease and death.

“As far as I can work out, the vaccine has less impact on the variant,’’ he said.

“The vaccination drive will continue because the vaccination will save lives and the vaccination will also be part of our response to the current surge and we will be running out a vaccination plan that will be running concurrently with our responses that we have currently on going.

“As far as I know we still maintain the protection and to the best of our knowledge we haven’t got some clear cut data that says exactly how much less effective it is.’’

On obtaining passes to access contained areas he said: “Now everyone is trying to ask the question on how they would get a pass. They are forgetting the reason why we are trying to contain the virus.

“They are trying to bypass the law and forgetting the medical agenda.”

Edited by Ranoba Baoa

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