Hundreds of people took part in a protest against a compulsory vaccination law in French Polynesia over the weekend.
The local law, passed in August, will come into force on October 23, unless the appeals filed against it before the Council of State are successful.
The law concerns any person working in contact with the public.
Protesters say a petition against this law has collected 25,000 signatures.
Only one in two locals are vaccinated, despite a sharp increase in vaccination during the Delta wave, which has killed more than 450 people in the past two months in this overseas community.
An exterior view of the French Polynesia Taaone Hospital in Papeete. - The coronavirus seemed to have almost disappeared from French Polynesia between March and July. But with the Delta variant, it returned with unprecedented violence, saturating the Tahiti hospital centre within a month. Photo: AFP or licensors
AFP reports only half of the 280,000 inhabitants of French Polynesia are vaccinated.
Local traditional medicine and ivermectin (an antiparasitic drug deemed to have no effect against Covid-19 by the WHO) are the two treatments most defended by local opponents of the vaccine.
The latter believe that these treatments are not offered by the authorities because they harm the government's "vaccine propaganda".
According to the local health ministry, the epidemic has killed 623 people in French Polynesia, without taking into account deaths at home.
In mainland France, several thousand people demonstrated to protest against the health pass imposed by the government to counter the epidemic over the weekend.
