Las Vegas Strip Warily Eyes New Deadly Health Crisis
The Las Vegas Strip has been an entertainment destination for people from all over the world for decades, which requires visitors to enjoy their activities within tight confines.
Whether you’re sitting side-by-side at a blackjack table, standing around a craps table, sitting next to a stranger at a slot machine or perhaps at a headlining show, guests at Vegas hotels and casinos can be at risk of contracting infectious diseases. Sin City has already come under scrutiny over the past three years for the “triplet epidemic” of the coronavirus pandemic, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, and the flu, as well as a Mpox scare, which was originally called monkeypox.
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Things go back to normal
Las Vegas closed for business in March 2020 to combat Covid-19 outbreak with hotel casinos operated by Caesars Entertainment (CZR) – Get Free Report, MGM Resorts International (MGM) – Get Free Report, Wynn Resorts (WYNN) – Get Free Report and everyone else closed their doors until June when strict masking and social distancing rules came into effect. Things did not return to normal until March 2021.
The social distancing period saw measures such as Plexiglas screens and player restrictions at tables for visitors brave enough to make the trip to the casino. Tripledemia discouraged many would-be guests from visiting Las Vegas for fear of catching one of the nasty viruses floating around there.
But by January 2023, the Nevada Hospital Association was reporting that the overcrowded hospital situation of almost three years ago was fading with a rapid decline in hospitalizations.
“Nevada continues to experience a rapid decline in the number of people requiring hospitalization for respiratory viruses, including covid-19, influenza and RSV,” the Nevada Hospital Association said Jan. 18, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported .
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The ultimate culprit that makes people sick
Now, however, we have a new culprit that is making people sick. Candida Auris, or C. Auris, a drug-resistant fungus that has been labeled a “serious threat to global health” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is spreading, further pushing health care resources to the brink. This virus tends to thrive in healthcare settings causing bloodstream infections and even death.
The Nevada Department of Health and Human Services in April 2022 alerted health care providers to outbreaks of the C. auris fungus in Southern Nevada, the Review-Journal reported, with the earliest cases detected in August 2021.
Nevada had 384, more than 15%, of the nation’s 2,377 cases of C. auris in 2022, according to the CDC. The agency said 27 states and the District of Columbia have reported cases, with the earliest U.S. infections reported in 2013.
More than 1,000 people in Southern Nevada have been infected with the fungus since August 2021, according to the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine, with about 100 C. auris patients dying. Surprisingly, Northern Nevada has only had one detected case of C. auris, which was in Reno in 2019.
Almost half, or 500, of Southern Nevada’s cases were clinical cases, such as an invasive infection of the blood, heart or brain. The remaining cases were known as colonization cases with the fungi found living on the patient’s skin but not causing infection.
