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RIO DE JANEIRO. — Spanish tennis stars Rafael Nadal and David Ferrer insisted on Monday they were unworried by Brazil’s Zika virus outbreak as they prepare to compete at the Rio Open ATP tournament this week.

“I’m not at all afraid,” Nadal (29) told a Press conference. “I go out at night, and I know there’s a risk, but I’m just happy to be back here again.

“If I get sick well then that’s just bad luck,” insisted the 14-time Grand Slam winner.

“I can see for myself that people here are going about their business as if everything was okay, so things can’t be that bad.

“People are going to the beach, going out for walks, having dinner in restaurants,” the world number five continued.

Ferrer, ranked sixth in the world, said he had been reassured by Brazil’s efforts to wipe out the mosquitoes which carry the virus.

“We’ve been told that everything possible has been done so that there will be no mosquitoes, which is comforting,” he said.

“We’ve been wearing long trousers at night but I’m not getting obsessed by the whole thing.”

Brazil has been most affected by the outbreak that has spread rapidly through Latin America and the Caribbean, with 1,5 million people in the country infected since early 2015.

While it causes only mild flu-like symptoms in most people, scientists suspect when it strikes a pregnant woman, it can cause her baby to be born with microcephaly, or an abnormally small head.

Nadal is one of the first major sports figures to compete in the city since Brazil became the focal point for the virus that has spread rapidly across the Americas. Health officials believe it is linked to microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size that can result in developmental problems.

Despite a recent surge in reports of infants born with these birth defects in Brazil’s northeast that world health officials say is likely linked to the mosquito-born virus, Nadal, who has qualified for the men’s singles tennis event at the Games, said the situation in Rio “was not likely to be so serious.”

“The whole thing seems to have been blown out of proportion,” Nadal said.

“The reality is that we are here in Rio for an international tennis tournament and I’m here and I can see that everything looks totally normal,” he insisted.

“I see people conducting their lives normally . . . I see people walking, people on the beach, people in restaurants, people having completely normal lives,” the world’s former top player Nadal told reporters at the Jockey Club, which is hosting the Rio Open.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Saturday vowed that the virus would not jeopardize the Rio Olympics in August.

Several athletes and visitors planning to come to the Olympics have expressed concern about Zika, which has been reported in more than 30 countries, according to the World Health Organisation. — AFP.