Minister for Youth and Sports Parveen Bala confirms the resumption of contact sports in the country depends on athletes, officials, administrators and even spectators being fully vaccinated.
Bala highlighted this while launching the framework for the resumption of sports and recreational activities in the country.
He says this will ensure the protection of our younger athletes.
It has not been revealed as to when sports and recreational events can resume in the country.
Bala says with the framework in place, we must ensure that once we return to full contact sports, we do not fall down to square one and this means learning to live with new protocols.
He says the restarting of organized sports and recreational activities will require each stakeholder to play their part.
Bala adds all sporting bodies are also required to have their 2020 Fiji Safe Sports certification and has revealed that four sporting organizations do not have their protocols certified.
The Minister says as seen around the world, sporting activities can be a super spreader event of COVID-19.
Under the framework, an individual cannot return to sports if they have been unwell or had contact with a known or suspected case of COVID-19 in the last 14 days.
Any individual with respiratory symptoms should be considered a potential case and must immediately self-isolate and be medically cleared by a doctor to return to the training environment.
It also states that athletes returning to sport after COVID-19 infection require special consideration prior to resumption of high intensity physical activity.
