Rio’s most famous Carnival — a five day festival of dancing, bared flesh and wild costumes — got underway in spite of warnings that the Zika virus might make even kissing dangerous.
Mayor Eduardo Paes handed a big golden key to the city to the Carnival’s ceremonial King Momo, who promised a spectacular show.
“With great happiness, brotherly love and peace, I declare the best Carnival on Earth open — our Carnival in the Marvelous City,” the dancing king, who is elected ahead of the festivities, said on Friday.
The annual mega-bash famed for lavish — and skimpily dressed — samba parades and all-night street dancing is expected to attract as many as five million people.
In Sao Paulo, Brazil’s most populous city and its economic capital, Carnival celebrations were kicked off under intermittent summer rain, with a tribute to Carlinhos de Jesus, one of Brazil’s most famous salon dancers.
This year’s Carnival across Brazil starts under the cloud of the mosquito-transmitted Zika virus, which normally provokes few ill effects, but is blamed for an outbreak of serious birth defects in babies born to mothers infected while pregnant.
The scare gripping Latin America took a new twist with the announcement that the virus — so far believed to be transmitted almost exclusively through mosquito bites — can be detected in saliva and urine.
There is no proof yet that Zika can spread through bodily fluids, said Paulo Gadelha, head of the Fiocruz institute in Rio de Janeiro.
But he still advised pregnant women “to avoid kissing.”
“Given the possibility that this form of transmission might exist, pregnant women should take precautionary measures,” he said. (AFP)
