Rio de Janeiro's carnival, a glittering, sequin-studded festival of the flesh, exploded back to life Friday with the first famed samba school parades since Covid-19 hit Brazil. Shaking the ground in time to the beat, a sparkling sea of dancers, drummers and multi-story floats reclaimed the 'Sambadrome,' the iconic beach city's carnival parade venue, which had been turned into a drive-through vaccination center at the height of the health crisis. The all-night parades by the city's top samba schools Friday and Saturday are the first since February 2020, marking a turning point for Brazil, where Covid-19 has claimed more than 660,000 lives -- second only to the United States. The festivities were hit by tragedy, however, when an 11-year-old girl died after being injured in a float accident during a lower-level samba school parade contest Wednesday. The pandemic had left Brazilians full of 'saudades' -- Portuguese for 'longing' -- for carnival, a free-for-all of dancing, singing and partying that is essentially the opposite of social distancing. There were concerns carnival would be axed again this year, after Rio authorities canceled it in 2021 and then postponed this edition by two months, wary of the Omicron variant. But with more than 75 percent of Brazil's 213 million people now fully vaccinated, the average weekly Covid-19 death toll has plunged from more than 3,000 a year ago to around 100 -- allowing the show to go on. All participants and the 75,000 attendees expected each night are required to present proof of vaccination. Each group in the competition has 60 to 70 minutes to tell a story in music and dance, evaluated on nine criteria by the jury. The reigning champions, Viradouro, paid tribute to Rio's epic 1919 carnival -- the first celebrated after the devastation of another pandemic, the Spanish flu. Other schools picked themes charged with social messages, with Brazil facing divisive elections in October expected to pit far-right President Jair Bolsonaro against leftist ex-leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Of the 12 schools, eight chose themes dealing with racial injustice or Afro-Brazilian culture and history, loaded issues in a country where the current president has faced frequent accusations of racism. Carnival should also provide some needed relief for the pandemic-battered economy. But street vendor Maria Vitoria Souza, 18, who was selling drinks outside the parades, said sales 'could have been better.' Participants were just happy the party was on.
