Red-faced Rio about upside-down mask vaccination campaign

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An ad campaign encouraging Brazilians to get vaccinated against COVID-19 became the butt of online jokes when some noticed a man wearing his mask upside down, prompting the Rio de Janeiro government to apologize on Sunday.

Called “Rio Embraces the Vaccine,” the state government’s public billboard shows a health worker in a white lab coat hugging himself and appearing to be smiling under an FFP2 mask whose metal clip – meant to fit over the nose – is too see under his chin.

“The mask in this ad looks … upside down ???? This is serious,” tweeted Jandira Feghali, a congressman and physician who was one of the first to comment on the blunder.

“I think the inverted mask image is perfect! So representative – everything is really backwards here in Rio de Janeiro,” another Twitter user joked.

“Rio de Janeiro has never managed to get the pandemic under control, and that inverted mask shows that your recklessness is a constant,” said another.

The fracas soon led state officials to acknowledge the mistake.

“Thank you for pointing this out. We, the communications professionals from the State Ministry of Health and the Rio de Janeiro PR agency, apologize for not noticing this flaw in the use of masks in the campaign,” it said. Ministry of Health on Twitter.

It told AFP it had already removed the ads in question and would be running a “second phase” of the campaign starting Tuesday.

COVID-19 has claimed more than 39,000 lives in the state of Rio, one of the hardest hit states in Brazil.

Interim Governor Claudio Castro has been criticized for opposing restrictive measures to stem the spread of COVID-19, as has his ally far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

The state government is accused of mishandling the health crisis, and a number of former officials, including ex-Gov. Wilson Witzel, are facing corruption investigations into allegedly misappropriated funds for pandemics.

Brazil has recorded a total of more than 350,000 COVID-19 deaths, second only to the United States.

It is fighting a coronavirus that is flooding hospitals as the government struggles to get enough vaccines for the country’s 212 million people.

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