By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
Major league sports will try to restart in places like Florida — and possibly in Las Vegas that might host NHL playoffs — amid surges in COVID-19 cases.
With an upward trend over four weeks, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak mandated people to wear masks and face coverings in public effective Friday.
Period.
“Please wear a mask for everyone’s safety,” Sisolak said at a half-hour news conference Wednesday. “Everyone is mandated to wear a mask.”
Keep in mind multiple reported and published sources have identified Las Vegas as a host city for the NHL Eastern Conference playoffs, where a dozen teams would play in front of no fans. It would be a boost in the occupancy rates of hotels near T-Mobile Arena, though players would be in a bubble and not accessible to fans.
The respiratory disease is transmitted more when people do not wear masks and congregate indoors. There are more than 120,000 coronavirus deaths in the U.S.
Sisolak said, “Clearly for many, the excitement and enthusiasm for escaping our confinement and finally being able to enjoy dinner out with our families, buy new clothes or get a haircut, overshadowed the good judgement we practiced in the previous months. Unfortunately and inexcusably, I also made an error in judgement while out to dinner, where I was photographed not wearing a mask. It was an error and inexcusable.
“Too many Nevadans have had the same lapse of judgement. Every hour there are photographs, or videos, posted of large unmasked clusters of people….clusters of potential COVID19 spread.”
He said masks were the way to go:
“In fact, one study highlighted by my Medical Advisory Team showed that replacing our strict lockdown with social distancing alone, without universal masking, results in an unchecked spread, with potentially devastating results. It showed that when at least 80% of a population adopts universal masking, it results in a substantial reduction of infection. On the other hand, masking at only 50% of a population is not sufficient to prevent continued spread. ”
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