The State Health Department of Rio de Janeiro (SES) recommended that the parade of samba schools in Sapucaí be maintained, but defended the suspension of street Carnival, given the epidemiological situation in the state. The note was issued this Friday night (7), after a meeting of technicians from the scientific committee, who advised the government to adopt more restrictive measures.
The minutes of the meeting between the committee’s technicians will be forwarded to the Secretary of State for Health, Alexandre Chieppe, who will analyze the recommendations, but who considers it too early to decide on the cancellation of the Carnival in Sapucaí.
“It is not possible for us to take a decision, now, to suspend an event that will take place in two months’ time, in light of the current epidemiological situation,” said the secretary of the ministry.
Chieppe also claims that, based on the experience of other countries, the Ômicron variant tends to have a faster transmission. He believes that, until Carnival, cases of infection will drop, and it is possible that the parades at Marquês de Sapucaí will be maintained, following the safety protocols necessary for the revelers.
Also on Friday, the state governor, Cláudio Castro, made a statement on social networks stating that he would suggest that the technicians of the state scientific committee consider suspending the street Carnival in all municipalities in the state.
“It would be irresponsible to authorize agglomerations, without the possibility of following sanitary protocols, while the cases of Covid-19 grow”, Castro wrote in the publication.
Suspended technical tests
Also on Friday (7), the tourism company of the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro (Riotur), sent a letter to the Independent League of Samba Schools (Liesa) requesting the suspension of street rehearsals at samba schools due to the increase of Covid-19 cases in the city in recent weeks.
Liesa, in turn, informed that it accepted the decision, but asks the associations to carry out the tests in their courts, guaranteeing the requirement of proof of vaccination against Covid for access and permanence in the places.
Earlier, experts heard by CNN defended the suspension of Carnival in Rio because of the advance of Ômicron in the country.
For the director of the Brazilian Society of Immunizations (SBIm), Renato Kfouri, this is not the time to promote any kind of agglomeration. “We arrived at a high transmission rate, in a variant that doesn’t respect the vaccine very much. No type of agglomeration should be promoted, neither with nor without a passport, nor with or without vaccine”, he said.
Reference: CNN Brasil
