Reopening the state of Nevada will not happen any time soon, and Governor Steve Sisolak says he can’t give a precise date when the process of reopening will begin.
“I understand that people are anxious. I know they want a date. I would like nothing better than to give a date. But what I have to look for, I’m not determining when the date will be. The virus and the science are deciding when this date will be,” Sisolak said. “I don’t want to risk the chance of undoing it by opening a week or two early and then have another spike and have to shut everything back down again, starting back at square zero.”
The Governor’s team of medical and scientific experts
The governor reports that he and his team of medical and scientific experts must wait to see a 14-day downward trend in the number of reported COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. He points out this in line with the White House guidelines.
“My experts are saying that we think we’ve reached a plateau. It goes up a little, down a little, up a little, down a little. We’re going to a plateau. But we haven’t started a trajectory downward where we’re seeing a reduction in the number of hospitalizations not on just one day, but a steady basis,” Sisolak said. “We’re not going to know that we’re on the way until we’re a certain amount of time into it. So we’ll see that it’s simply an anomaly that we’ve had a one or two day dip.”
Gover Steve Sisolak declared a state of emergency, activating the State of Emergency Operation Center in Nevada on March 13. The very next day, the Governor formed a Medical Advisory Team led by Dr. Ihsan Azzam, the State’s Chief Medical Officer. Additionally, the team was staffed by four other medical experts, including the dean of the University of Nevada, Reno School of Community Health Sciences, Trudy Larson.
However, some have pointed out that Nevada’s Chief Medical Officer is not licensed to practice medicine anywhere in the United States. While Dr. Azzam has a masters degree from the University of Nevada, Reno, as well as experience in environmental public health and epidemiology, his only experience practicing medicine came during the 1980s; that’s when he practiced obstetrics and gynecology in Africa for several years, before immigrating to the United States in the 1990s.
Azzam also led the team of medical advisors to urge Sisolak to ban the use of the FDA-approved drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to treat COVID-19. Governor Sisolak did that, issuing an emergency order on March 24 banning those drugs for the treatment of the coronavirus. That decision has triggered at least one lawsuit.
Not reopening any time soon
When asked about lifting the stay-at-home order, as well as reopening the casinos and “nonessential” businesses, the governor did not set a date.
“Las Vegas is a great place to come and enjoy yourself and have a great weekend, but just not today. Today is not that day,” he said. “But when that day comes, we’ll welcome everybody back with open arms, and Vegas will remain one of the safest places in the world to come and visit.”
When asked if he plans on extending the stay-at-home order beyond April 30, 2020, he said, “Well, it needs to be extended for some things, obviously. I mean, we’re not going to open the Strip. I worked with Sandra Douglass Morgan, the Chair of the Gaming Control Board, and we’re certainly not opening up The Strip. What we will do, if it’s possible, is to have some opening restrictions planned by then. But I don’t ‘know right now. If you’re asking me today, no, I can’t say we’re opening up. But if you ask in seven days, well maybe then we’ll start to see that trajectory going downward. We’ll know that when we get just a couple of more days out, but we’re not there yet. I don’t want to give anybody any false hope.”
Despite this, several of the casinos along the Strip have begun taking hotel reservations for mid to late-May.
Also, the Nevada Gaming Control Board recently released a list of procedures the state’s casinos must follow to reopen following COVID-19. The memorandum also asks gaming venues to submit their reopening plans to the gaming board at least 7 days before reopening for review.
