Zika virus just adds to Brazil’s growing woes
Carnival celebration masks worries about economy, Olympics
The dazzling colors, rhythmic music and raucous partying that mark Carnival season dominated life again in this teeming metropolis.
Yet the partying and excitement this year masked a growing list of troubles that plague Rio and the rest of Brazil.
First it was the collapse of a once soaring economy, followed by a humiliating World Cup defeat on home soil in 2014. Then came a growing corruption scandal enveloping President Dilma Rouseff and fears the country won’t be ready to host the Olympic Games this summer.
Now Brazilians must contend with an outbreak of the Zika virus that threatens to discourage athletes and visitors from coming to the Olympics, unless the government gets the spreading health problem under control.
“Brazil has lost its momentum, and everybody knows and feels it,” said Henrik Jonsson, a Rio- based Swedish author of books about Brazil’s foreign policy and its society. “The past 10 years of stability are over.”
Zika is transmitted by mosquitoes, infected blood and sexual contact. The World Health Organization declared the virus a worldwide health emergency following reports lastmonth that Brazilian babies were born with birth defects because their mothers contracted Zika while pregnant. Yet Brazilian officials and ordinary citizens may not be taking the crisis seriously enough.
“We don’t do special cleaning for Zika,” said Luiz Claudio Nascimento, part of the cleaning crew that scrubbed remnants of pesticides sprayed days earlier along Carnival’s parade route. “As far as we have been told, it is not so serious. You just need to drink a lot of water.”
Brazilian Olympics organizers say the types of mosquitoes that carry Zika don’t live near the Olympic park and stadium. However, local medical authorities said they’ve documented several cases of Zika in the town of Jacera pagua, which abuts the Olympic park. “There is some risk,” said Marzia Montello, a physician at Jacera pagua’s Lourenco Jorge Hospital. “People should not be alarmed, though.”
In the Morro da Mineira neighborhood on a hill overlooking the Sambadrome, one of Carnival’s exhibition sites, local residents reported several cases of the disease.
Like many of Rio’s favelas ( slums), the neighborhood lacks fresh water and proper sewage. An open- air sewer clogged with plastic and stagnant water runs through the area— ideal conditions for mosquitoes. Mara da Silva Riveiro, a resident, said public health officials haven’t visited the area to tackle Zika or the dengue virus, an illness related to Zika that occasionally erupts in Brazil’s poorest districts
Brazilians might soon become more alert to the dangers of Zika. TV stations have begun broadcasting health warnings and information about the virus. Carnival chiefs in Rio de Janeiro said partygoers should forgo kissing, a Carnival tradition, so revelers don’t spread the disease through their saliva.
Many Brazilians say they don’t have much faith in their leaders to take control of the problem.
Walter Suarez Waldinho, a sailor in the city’sMarina Gloria, where Olympic sailing events will be held, points to a promise by officials to clean Rio’s Guanabara Bay. A blanket of trash and sewage still floats on the water there.
“Guanabara Bay has always been dirty,” he said. “They say it will be clean for the Olympics. But I will wait and see.”