The three-day closure of Paradise City’s casino as a result of a Covid-19 infection of a staff member has been extended until at least September 7 as three more employees have tested positive for the coronavirus.
The three additional cases were discovered through testing on Wednesday and complicate the company’s plan to institute thorough disinfection measures and then quickly reopen.
While it appears that the hotel and resort areas might reopen this afternoon as planned, the latest news can be expected to drive many potential customers away from the facility.
Two of those infected are Chinese nationals working as chefs in a Chinese restaurant, while the other two appear to be Koreans, a staff member of the restaurant and a hotel secretary.
The Chinese restaurant where the cluster has been found is expected to remain closed for at least two weeks.
VIP play had been projected to be a major segment of the potential overall Japanese gaming market, but a lot has changed since the law permitting integrated resorts was passed in 2018.
The closure of physical casinos and suspension of sports tournaments in 2020 resulted in a banner year for live casino products. Experts believe that even as we return to normality, the live casino boom will be far from over.
In this April edition of Asia Gaming Briefings we take the pulse of how the North Asia jurisdictions of Japan, Korea and the Russian Far East have fared.
The world is bouncing back, or at least coming to grips with the fact that going forward not much will be the same as before. Commendably, this industry quickly understood the need to adapt to a new normal, and that the days of targeting the low hanging fruit of the VIP sector are gone.
Over the years, many of the answers have been remarkably prescient in their forecasts for the near-term direction of Asia’s gaming industry. However, we can safely say that no one came anywhere close to guessing what 2020 may have had in store.
