COVID-19 pandemic has affected us all. The pandemic has changed our lives in every single way and has taught us tough lessons. The pandemic is slightly scaling back and the countries and industries are getting back to a more or less regular lifestyle, yet the lives of our people have been changed forever.
The pandemic has affected every single sector including one of the biggest industries in the world, which is the gambling industry. This is not easy for casinos, but unfortunately, many of them have been facing a completely undesired new reality.
While some countries are still struggling and are in the peak of the pandemic period, others are slowly repairing and thus trying to fix everything they have missed and messed up during the previous three months when everything was on lockdown and stopped. Canada is one of the very few countries which is getting back to normal life, well, at least Canada is trying to do so.
Some casinos and gambling venues have opened already, while many of them are yet to open. Obviously this is way away from the gambling style everyone was used to, but it is still better than not having anything at all. There are many regulations and laws which have to be completed and fulfilled in order for the casino to be able to function. Many of those regulations require guests to wear masks and for the staff to sanitize everything including elevator buttons every hour at least. This is none of the easy things to do, but at least no one promised that it would have been easy either.
While every single casino has mandatory regulations, including wearing masks and sanitizing hands before and after using a certain device, still the capacity of the rooms and halls in the casino is not more than 250 people simultaneously. Many casinos in AltQuebec and Vancouver as well as in Atlantic province are keeping the slot machines off in order to encourage the social distance and have dedicated way more time for cleaning and sanitizing them.
Including the table games where more than one person has to touch the cards. In the casinos where card and table games are not prohibited, there are strict restrictions and the glass barriers in order to prevent the spread of the virus and to keep the guests as well as the staff safe.
Frequent visitors like Coward Willson, who is 66 and she has the annual tradition of having a day-long tour through all six Vancouver Island located casinos with her husband, said that she might not visit the casino for very long. It is simply due to the fact that she has an autoimmune disease and thus she does not want to risk seeing her grandchildren visiting casinos and entertainment. Coward is not the only one in this. Many guests have the same opinion.
Yet, unlike Coward, there are some people who enjoy the opening of the casinos back again and thus were among the first ones to enter the casino despite the regulations and the guidelines the government and health organizations have implemented amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Overall, the situation is definitely going towards a positive attitude rather than the negative. Many casinos have opened while the rest of them shall soon be open by the middle of August. One way or another COVID-19 has changed our lives and we can not run away from this fact, though we can run towards the new improvements and face the challenges.