Rio de Janeiro delays Carnival parades as omicron spreads

The world-famous Carnival festivities in Rio de Janeiro will probably be held in late April relatively than the ultimate weekend of February, because the variety of coronavirus circumstances in Brazil spikes and the omicron variant spreads throughout the nation.
“The decision was made respecting for the current situation of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil and the need, at this time, to preserve lives and join forces to drive vaccination throughout the country,” mentioned an announcement issued Friday collectively by the cities of Rio and Sao Paulo, which additionally delayed the beginning of its Carnival parades till April 21.
Earlier within the afternoon, Rio’s Mayor Eduardo Paes and his Sao Paulo counterpart Ricardo Nunes held a video name together with their respective well being secretaries and every metropolis’s league of samba faculties that placed on the parade, based on the assertion.
Paes introduced weeks in the past that his metropolis’s raucous avenue events, a few of which draw a whole lot of 1000’s of revellers, wouldn’t proceed within the method they did earlier than the pandemic, however with out clarifying what form they could take.
He mentioned on the time, nonetheless, that samba faculties’ parades by means of the Sambadrome would proceed as deliberate, in mild of the relative ease with which vaccination standing and detrimental coronavirus exams may very well be checked upon entry.
The parade by means of the Sambadrome is a significant vacationer draw for Rio and the central fixture of town’s pre-Lenten celebration. It attracts tens of 1000’s of spectators in its bleachers and tens of hundreds of thousands watch from residence.