Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Breathing easy: Some Las Vegas tourists eagerly shed masks as vaccinated return to normal life

Masks off at Bellagio

Hillary Davis / Las Vegas Sun

This sign at the Bellagio advises visitors that vaccinated guests are no longer required to wear a face mask as part of COVID-19 safety standards.

A day into relaxed mask guidance nationwide, the Las Vegas Strip looked ever closer to normal.

That’s not to say that masks were nonexistent.

Diana Bonsack, visiting from New Mexico, had dutifully worn her mask while on her girls’ trip this week to Las Vegas with her mother and friend, even though she had been vaccinated against COVID-19, she said. But she whipped off the mask as she waited for a taxi from the Paris to the airport upon hearing the federal guidance saying vaccinated people generally no longer need to wear masks even indoors.

She was glad to be bare-faced and breathing easier as the temperatures tickled at 100 degrees.

“That’s good, because it’s only gonna get hotter,” she said.

The new normal of wearing a mask and social distancing that has been in place for more than a year was still highly visible in the resort corridor, not just in face coverings but in the copious numbers of motion-activated hand sanitizer dispensers, the capacity limits posted on the doors of high-end boutiques, and the signs that had not been stored away or reprogrammed yet reminding guests to wear masks.

Wayne Newton’s smiling eyes and covered nose and mouth still filled a large digital sign outside Bally’s with an entreating “Mr. Las Vegas says: ‘Please wear a mask.’”

But on this characteristically warm late-spring day, it was sun’s-out, chin’s-out for many visitors. The carefree and celebratory indicators that have become increasingly common in the last few months were out in force: street musicians with tip jars, women dressed as showgirls asking tourists to not be shy and stop for a photo, the footlong slushy margaritas, and, yes, masks denoting brides and newly minted 21-year-olds.

Several casino operators had already received waivers from the Nevada Gaming Control Board to operate their gaming floors at 100% with no social distancing after submitting requests noting that the vast majority of their employees were vaccinated against COVID-19. That put them ahead of the benchmark Clark County set last month to fully expand capacity in public spaces from the current 80% once 60% of residents had received at least one shot.

Then, on Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said fully vaccinated people don’t need to wear masks in most indoor settings. Gov. Steve Sisolak followed up promptly with an amendment to the state’s mask directive putting it in line with the CDC’s guidelines.

The county commission will revisit the topic of masks — which remained required per state rules at the time the commission passed its local COVID-19 mitigation plan on April 20 — when it meets Tuesday.

The Nevada Gaming Control Board, which regulates casinos independently of counties, said that all licensees will be allowed to follow the updated guidance.

To that end, many properties immediately passed on the flexibility to guests. By midday Friday, operators including MGM Resorts, Wynn Resorts, Cosmopolitan, Caesars, Circa and its sister properties The D and Golden Gate, and Sands — the Venetian and Palazzo — had agreed to go mask-optional for vaccinated guests, though some still required masks on workers.

The Plexiglas partitions once common at table games were all but gone and, as the day went on, more seats filled with players sitting shoulder to shoulder. Poker rooms especially had few open chairs. Slots that had previously been dormant every other machine glowed and chimed in uninterrupted rows.

One year ago today, casinos were closed entirely.

UNLV epidemiologist Brian Labus said the challenge with the new mask protocol is obvious: It’s on the honor system. There’s no way to verify who in a crowd of strangers is vaccinated.

But casinos, like those that were granted full occupancy, are controlling what they can through high vaccine uptake among their public-facing staff. While that uptake doesn’t extend to the vaccine coverage of the guests, the churn of visitors, even if many are infected and contagious, will keep disease from spiking among local residents, especially as vaccinated casino staff make hostile hosts for the virus.

COVID-19 has an incubation period of up to two weeks, longer than the typical business or leisure trip, which flushes Vegas’ system, Labus said. This concept shows in other highly infectious respiratory diseases, like influenza, as Vegas doesn’t have exceptional flu outbreaks, he explained.

“If tourists are sitting next to each other and spreading disease they basically take it home before it spreads to somebody else,” he said. “If you get infected in Las Vegas, by the time you’re able to spread it to someone you’ve already headed home, basically.”

The virus is still circulating, and the vaccine is highly effective, but not 100%. Risk remains, but the framing of the mask discussion has changed for the better, said Labus, a Sisolak medical adviser.

“We’re not discussing this because people say ‘It infringes on my rights’ or ‘I have the freedom to not wear a mask’ or anything like that,” he said. “We’re talking about seeing a nationwide reduction in disease transmission, which is exactly what we want to happen from our vaccination programs.”

In Nevada, the COVID-19 case rate has remained low, especially compared to highs of more than 2,000 cases a day over the winter. On Thursday, the state’s 14-day moving average of new cases was 206, the lowest since last June.

In a news release, Nevada Health Response stressed that some people may still choose to wear masks.

“COVID-19 is still very much a threat in our state and many Nevadans may choose to continue using masks based on their and their families’ personal health concerns,” the release said. “Others should respect this choice.”

And so it was with another Paris visitor, who was more cautious than most around him. He wore two masks beneath a combination shield-set of safety glasses as he waited for his cab. He said he had been vaccinated but the vaccine is not guaranteed to keep the virus away.

“The mask is good,” he said.

Conversely, a woman from Ohio paused with her group on the Bellagio’s exterior mezzanine to snap photos of the mid-Strip landmarks. She had been here all week, and asked how she felt to wrap up her vacation mask-free, she said cheerily: “Fabulous.”