![]() ![]() Some marks of how coronavirus has altered the city, though, are more disturbing than empty casinos or shuttered daiquiri bars. When the awful silence from the strip faded away, it was replaced with the hum of life in any major city right now: people riding bikes, walking dogs, cautiously getting groceries. Vegas, of course, is more than its tourist quarter. Bottom: People sleep in a parking lot in Las Vegas on 30 March 2020. Top Right: The entrance to Circus Circus Casino during the Covid-19 shutdown. Top Left: A sign notifies drivers that the entrance to the Encore Casino is closed. Unhoused people looked for places to rest and food to eat in empty trash cans. Overnight, police clustered at the intersections and the entrances to the higher end casinos. Much of the street is also webbed in construction netting and the sounds of workers hammering during the day, the pause of the pandemic becoming a good time to give the sewer system a facelift. All the left-behind establishments are carefully watched by security guards, some of whom will try to stop photos being taken of a casino with caution tape strung across its entrance. The strip and Fremont Street aren’t totally empty, of course. The giant resort hotels behind the casinos are walls of black, every hotel room dark. In a particularly grim twist, many establishments have been using the hashtag #VegasStronger in their signage, since #VegasStrong was already used, in the aftermath of the 2017 shooting. They make for a haunting backdrop: “Stay safe, stay strong, we look forward to welcoming you back soon,” from the MGM Grand, and “Doors closed, hearts open” at Palace Station. ![]() Before they closed, the casinos posted goodbye-for-now messages on the digital screens they usually use to welcome guests. Other tourist destinations that have shut down, such as Disneyland, are closed to visitors, but on the strip stragglers can float across the empty places like they’re scrambling around in the ruins of an empty civilization. Bottom: An empty Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas during the Covid-19 shutdown. In neighboring Hong Kong, authorities are starting to loosen draconian coronavirus restrictions even as daily cases top 3,000, in a push to reboot the financial hub and its economy.Top/middle: Closed casinos at the Fremont Street Experience in Las Vegas on 30 March 2020. The former Portuguese colony has only one public hospital for its more than 600,000 residents, and its medical system was stretched before the coronavirus outbreak.Īuthorities have set up a makeshift hospital in a sports dome near the city's Las Vegas-style Cotai strip and have about 600 medical workers from the mainland assisting them. More than 90% of Macao's 600,000 residents are fully vaccinated against COVID but this is the first time the city has had to grapple with the fast-spreading omicron variant. More than 20,000 people are in mandatory quarantine as the government adheres to China's zero-COVID policy, which aims to stamp out all outbreaks, running counter to a global trend of trying to coexist with the virus. Macao has recorded around 1,700 coronavirus infections since mid-June. ![]() Macao imposed the shutdown last Monday, shuttering the city's economic engine - its casinos - and forbidding residents from leaving their apartments, except for essential activities such as grocery shopping. The lockdown in the Chinese special administrative region had been set to end Monday. ![]() Macao's government will extend a lockdown of casinos and other businesses until Friday, as authorities work to stop the spread of COVID-19 in the world's biggest gambling hub, according to a statement on its website. ![]()
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