RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, proposed holding an early mini-Carnaval on the Brazilian island of Paquetá, whose population will be massively vaccinated next Sunday.
“If all goes well, we already have our first marked test event. Let’s vaccinate!”, stated Paes in a message on Twitter.
Paes, an avowed Carnaval lover, intends to organize the party in September on this island located in Guanabara Bay, an hour by boat from downtown Rio de Janeiro, in what will be the state’s first mass event.
Only residents of this island neighborhood, home to some 4,200 people, are expected to participate in the mini-Carnaval; however, the Mayor’s Office did not specify how it will control the entry of visitors.
Read also: Exploring Ilha de Paquetá in Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay
The traditional Carnaval celebrations were suspended this year throughout the country due to the strong advance of the pandemic in Brazil, one of the most affected nations in Latin America, which already has 17.4 million cases and more than 487,000 deaths.
Paquetá Island is part of a mass vaccination study led by the Rio de Janeiro City Hall and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), one of the main research centers in Latin America and responsible for the local production of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
This Sunday, the entire adult population that has not yet received the immunizer will be massively vaccinated, as part of a study carried out similarly in other cities such as Serrana and Botucatu in the state of Sao Paulo.
Vaccination continues to progress slowly in the country, and only a quarter of the population has been vaccinated with one of the two doses of the antigen. In contrast, just over 11% have received the full two-dose regimen.