Local businesses and tourism have been heavily impacted by the novel coronavirus, and many cities that benefit from visitors have advocated reopening despite COVID-19 concerns since lockdowns were first put in place, including Las Vegas. Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman has consistently advocated for the city to open amid the pandemic and even argued that the chance of risk could not be compared without a “control group” that did not follow social distancing.
Opening up casinos and the city to tourists nationwide doesn’t come without consequences, and Nevada now struggles with one of the highest rates of new infections, according to NPR. Just months after Sin City reopened its doors to visitors, data shows an increase in the COVID-19 positivity rate, with more than 15% of tests coming back positive. An analysis of cell phone data requested by ProPublica also found that thousands of people visited Las Vegas before returning to their home states amid the pandemic, contributing to a possible surge in cases nationwide.
“People have been highly mobile, and as a result, it makes sense why we see the continuation of the surge,” said Oscar Alleyne, an epidemiologist and chief program officer with the National Association of County and City Health Officials. While it is difficult to use contact tracing to pinpoint where a surge originated, researchers used cell phone data to analyze travel to and from Las Vegas during a four-day period in mid-July. About 26,000 devices were identified in Las Vegas during the four-day period, which later traveled to more than five different states within the same time frame. The data represents 5% of smartphone users in the U.S., ProPublica reported.
According to Alleyne, the data analysis creates a picture of how travel to Las Vegas could be spreading the coronavirus. “In this rush to reopen and reposition the economic activities, all we’ve been doing is spreading and amplifying the reach of this disease,” Alleyne said. Reopening Las Vegas could prove to be riskier than reopening schools according to Pinar Keskinocak, a professor who specializes in infectious disease modeling. Keskinocak compared people gathering in Las Vegas and spreading COVID-19 to a forest fire, noting that tourists “could significantly fuel the disease spread” as they return to their home states nationwide.
Las Vegas saw a 90% loss in visitors during its lockdown, NPR reported. Since reopening on June 4, the city has seen a steady increase, with visitors not only flying in but driving from neighboring states. According to ProPublica, 1 million passengers flew into the city in June. While this is a significant decrease from June 2019, it is still a large number amid an ongoing pandemic.
According to NPR, at the time casinos opened in early June, the state averaged between 100 to 200 cases per day. By mid-July Nevada’s average was more than 1,000 new coronavirus cases per day. A sudden increase in new cases has created a healthcare problem in which hospitals have not yet reached capacity but are close to doing so, according to the Nevada Hospital Association. With a history of understaffing among healthcare workers, the state is more at risk than others should an increase in cases and hospitalizations arise.
Dr. Joe Corcoran, the chief medical officer for southern Nevada hospitals run by HCA Healthcare, told NPR that hospitals are now treating twice as many COVID-19 patients in the Las Vegas area than they were in the spring, when cases had previously peaked. "There are so many components of this city where you're congregating together, my gut tells me that there are parts of Las Vegas that are just going to make it harder for us to get to a true low level of concern," he said. Corcoran added that those getting infected are of younger ages.
In order to keep up with the number of cases, hospitals are rescheduling what they consider unnecessary procedures, but staffing still remains an issue. "The nurses are getting sick, not just from COVID, it's also the stress, overworked," said Yarleny Roa-Dugan, a labor and delivery nurse. "We're not resting, so it's just everything that comes with it [COVID]." Roa-Dugan told NPR she has been asked to help with COVID-19 patients because of a shortage of staff.
As of this report, at least 648 new cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Nevada since Aug.17. The state has had at least 62,022 coronavirus cases and 1,077 deaths as a result of COVID-19, according to The New York Times database. In addition, at least 11 businesses in Nevada have received citations and penalties from the state in August alone for not complying with coronavirus safety measures, KTNV reported.
What happens in Vegas clearly doesn’t stay in Vegas. As tourists return home they may also be returning with some positive COVID-19 results. “There is a serious opportunity for spreading the virus, especially for people who are mildly sick or don’t know they’re sick,” said Crystal Watson, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “We’ve seen big outbreaks kicked off by these types of situations.”
