Five table game employees test positive
Gah. I live in a really bad place right now. My current home state, Georgia, is one of the nation’s COVID-19 hotspots. It just so happens to be the northern neighbor of THE hotspot and the southern neighbor of a very warm spot. The closest casino to me, Harrah’s Cherokee, is about a four-hour drive north to that warm spot and now it turns out that the casino is home to a COVID-19 “cluster.”
The North Carolina Division of Public Health defines a cluster as a workplace, educational, or community venue in where, “A minimum of five cases with illness onsets or initial positive results within a 14-day period, and plausible linkage between cases where cases were present in the same setting during the same time-period.”
In the case of Harrah’s Cherokee, five employees who manned table games have all tested positive for COVID-19. There’s your same setting and same time-period right there.
Infected staffers following isolation rules
I semi-joked at the outset about my unfortunate location, but I have been quite fortunate that my household has avoided getting sick so far. Thousands of people are hospitalized everyday because of this awful virus – there is nothing funny about it – and the United States is seeing around 1,000 deaths from COVID-19 per day right now. Reports on the five Harrah’s Cherokee staff members do not say how they are doing; we hope that they are relaxing at home, riding out at worst a mild illness.
The casino says that all five people are “following isolation orders” and that health officials from Jackson County and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians – the owner of the casino – are conducting contact tracing. Despite this, Harrah’s Cherokee regional casino manager Brooks Robinson said, “Based on information provided by the employees and video surveillance records, no other employees or customers have been identified as close contacts as defined by the Centers for Disease Control.”
Employees who are asymptomatic and test positive for COVID-19 must isolate for at least ten days. Those with symptoms must also isolate for at least ten days, plus go at least 24 hours without a fever, using no fever-reducing medication, and see an improvement in coughing and shortness of breath. We would assume that everyone would need to have negative test before returning to work.
Harrah’s Cherokee growing in prominence
Harrah’s Cherokee, home to World Series of Poker Circuit stops as well as the Circuit season-ending Global Casino Championship, reopened on May 28 at 30 percent capacity. It is remaining open despite the identification of the COVID-19 cluster.
The casino is popular in the region as one of only two casinos in North Carolina. It is a reasonable weekend drive from Atlanta and north Georgia, as well. According to the Carolina Public Press, Harrah’s Cherokee attracted 4 million visitors in 2018. It is a significant contributor to the local economy, as well, employing 3,500 people a total of $190 million in salaries, wages, and other benefits.
