Nevada’s casino workers are being fast-tracked for Covid vaccinations in hopes of accelerating the tourism industry’s recovery from the pandemic.
Governor Steve Sisolak and state health officials said leisure and hospitality employees, a group encompassing around 25 percent of the Nevada workforce, will be classed as essential workers and placed in what the state describes as its “Tier 1 lane” for inoculations, joining government workers, teachers, food-service and airport workers and others.
Appointments for the Tier 1 groups are being accepted online, according to news reports, and vaccines will be available at a variety of locations statewide.
The Nevada Resort Association, the powerful trade group representing the gaming industry, hailed the strategy, saying it “will accelerate the consumer confidence needed to drive the visitor volume our economy depends on.”
“The more Nevadans are swiftly vaccinated, the sooner our transmission rates decrease across the community,” said association President Virginia Valentine. “We believe this will provide peace of mind to visitors and influence their travel decisions against other communities where the rates of vaccination among front staff would be less certain.”
It could be a “significant competitive advantage,” she said.
Nevada has suffered record unemployment and a sharp decline in gaming revenue since the pandemic hit the state in full force last March. Recovery has been challenging, especially as the convention and meetings trade that is Las Vegas’ lifeblood has all but disappeared, and revenue and tourist numbers have remained soft as a result. Visitation in Southern Nevada plummeted from more than 42 million people in 2019 to about half that number in 2020, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.
