The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority will work with health officials to set up vaccination sites at casinos, according to a news report.
With cities cautioning against visiting Las Vegas during a surge in COVID-19 infections, the LVCVA wants to get the word out locally that vaccinations are important to individual lives and to the state’s tourism industry, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The LVCVA plans to work with local health officials to provide pop-up vaccination sites at hotel-casinos.
Billy Vassiliadis of Las Vegas-based R&R Partners said the current coronavirus issue is a national problem and that other states are “having their own challenges of getting their own people vaccinated.”
R&R recently signed a $500 million contract to remain as the LVCVA’s advertising and marketing agency. The firm has had the account for more than 40 years.
Vassiliadis said Las Vegas is visible and “easy to point to.”
“You can talk about Vegas, but Florida — and I’m not casting aspersions on anybody else — is such a big tourism destination, and Orlando is one of our significant convention competitors and they have numbers that are worse than ours,” he told the newspaper.
Delta Variant Spreading
Officials in Los Angles and other locations, including Chicago, have warned people about visiting Nevada because of its high rate of new COVID-19 cases and low vaccination rates.
I do want to recommend — especially if you’re unvaccinated — reconsider traveling to places where the seven-day COVID-19 case rates are increasingly high, like Nevada, our neighbor,” said Dr. Muntu Davis, a Los Angeles health official.
On Friday, Nevada reported more than 1,000 new COVID-19 cases, according to the Associated Press. Hospitalizations exceeded the 1,000 mark for the first time in more than five months.
A surge in cases since mid-May involving the highly contagious delta variant has led health officials to renew the push for vaccinations.
Nationwide, about 69 percent of eligible people have received at least one dose of vaccine, the Associated Press reported. In Nevada, 56 percent of residents 12 years and older have received one dose. About 47 percent of eligible Nevadans are fully vaccinated.
Casino Employees Mask Up
The Nevada Gaming Control Board stressed that it will enforce a mask mandate to match the one that Clark County recently issued for its employees working in public spaces, according to Chairman J. Brin Gibson.
“As a partner in the mitigation and management of the COVID-19 pandemic since its inception, the Board is fully supportive of the Southern Nevada Health District and the Clark County Commission in its mask mandate for employees in Clark County. The Board will ensure compliance with this requirement in Clark County within the Board’s areas of jurisdiction,” Gibson said.
This renewed threat to Las Vegas tourism is coming at a time when the area has seen an uptick in visitors. Vassiliadis told the newspaper he is optimistic, however.
“We know that we’re doing everything we can to get people here vaccinated, and now employees are going to be masked,” he said. “Some of the properties have 90 percent vaccination rates among employees.”
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