Lisa Michaels
A recent unanimous vote by Clark County lawmakers has freed up the city of Las Vegas to revert to pre-pandemic guidelines on June 1. The decision came with a pledge to follow guidelines laid out by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
The previously proposed plans to link business occupancy to COVID-19 vaccination rates, where public spaces would be fully opened once 60% of residents were vaccinated have been scrapped in the interim.
This is good news for the region’s economy as the restrictions imposed on large gatherings, capacity limits, dancing and others will fall away, allowing businesses to resume operations at full capacity. The decision by the county follows a similar easing of restrictions by the state and federal governments.
Private business owners may still enforce restrictions such as enforcing the wearing of masks among other counter-pandemic measures. Some controlled areas such as hospitals and healthcare facilities airports, and most forms of public transportation may still carry a mask requirement.
Commissioner Jim Gibson said,
“Note also that masking has never been something that we were acting upon until just now. The masking was something that the governor withheld when he delegated responsibility for coming up with a plan and executing of a plan to us. When the CDC and then the governor acted, that changed everything here.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made the recent announcement that fully vaccinated people need not wear masks in the majority of indoor settings and this amendment was swiftly followed up with an adjustment to the state’s mask directive by Gov. Steve Sisolak to bring it up to date with the CDC’s guidelines.
The state’s casino regulator, the Nevada Gaming Control Board, relayed that all licensees would be permitted to follow the updated guidelines.
Many venues have already pounced on the opportunity to return to normalcy, securing waivers from the gaming control board to allow their gaming floors to return to 100% capacity with no social distancing, seeing as the majority of their employees have already been vaccinated against COVID-19.
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