Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak said he will not order another casino closure as the state grapples with one of the worst rates of Covid-19 infection in the country.
While other states have reimposed lockdowns on the industry amid a raging wintertime surge in new cases and deaths from the virus, Nevada’s casinos are too important to the economy and employment to close, the governor said at a December 14 press conference.
“I know it’s hard for Nevadans to reconcile why some areas of our economy and public life are restricted while the state’s casinos are open. I get why it’s hard to reconcile that fact,” Sisolak said in announcing that mitigation efforts implemented around Thanksgiving would be extended until January 15. These include stricter mask requirements and 25 percent occupancy limits at casinos, restaurants, bars, recreation areas and other entertainment venues.
He said his concerns were with the rank-and-file workers who desperately need the jobs.
“I think it’s important to make this 100 percent clear,” he said. “When I think of the gaming industry, I am not losing sleep at night because I’m worried about their stock prices or whether gaming executives are going to make it through the pandemic and be able to keep a roof over their heads.”
What he doesn’t want, he said, is a return to the first months of the pandemic, when the industry was ordered closed for 78 days and 250,000 residents lost jobs, “the highest level ever reported by any state in modern history,” he said, far outstripping the 180,000 jobs lost during the Great Recession.
The press conference was called following a week in which the state reported 219 Covid-related deaths, the highest single-week total since the pandemic began.
Nevada currently has the highest rate of hospitalized Covid patients per capita in the nation and, as of last week, was reporting 2,700 new cases a day.
On the bright side, Sisolak said the Western States Scientific Safety Review Workgroup, comprising experts from California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, have confirmed that the new vaccine developed by Pfizer and currently in nationwide distribution is “safe and efficacious.”
He said he hoped Nevadans would begin receiving it as soon as this week.
“Our state team is eagerly awaiting our first allocation of the vaccine to arrive so Nevada can begin the process to vaccinate our frontline health care workers, who continue to battle this virus every day on behalf of Nevadans across the state.”
