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The Switzerland National Council (Bundersrat) will allow the country's casinos to re-open starting 6 june after a two month long shutdown. The casinos were closed in the middle of the month of March due to the pandemic, but regulations are loosening in Switzerland. Currently, the Council allows gathering of up to 300 people and contact training for sports, with a plan to allow professional sports from 8th June. The measures will be reviewed on 24th of June and if the situation remains the same, the number of people for gatherings will increase to 1.000.
Casinos will re-open according to their status. Those in green or low-risk transmission zones will be allowed to resume operations while casinos in orange zones must remain closed for the time being.
The decision from the Council was likely influenced by the fact the French government opened France's casinos earlier this week. Dutch casinos are set to open the 1st of July, while some other European countries opened their venues already, like Bulgaria on 30th of May and Austria on the 29th of May. In United Kingdom, casinos, also referred to as land-based or brick and mortar casinos, could re-open from July 2020 at the earliest, according to the latest speech on Covid-19 from Boris Johnson and the UK Government, but this can happen if companies will respect some rules. There are three possible prevention measures may also be introduced, which could be replicated in casino establishments, including: thermal imaging cameras that people have to walk through, health screening and mandatory face mask use.
Still we don't know exactly when in Italy there will be the chance. We still don't know a date of casinos re-opening in Italy, even if sports event, soccer above all, started again last week. From Spain the situation is more or less the same. We don't know when and how the betting shops and live casinos will be opened again in the country, but considering that all European countries are close to end the lockdown due to the virus and many of them are already "inside" the phase two, as they call it, of the pandemic, we really think the re-opening of casinos and betting shops could be really nigh. Different situation is coming from Las Vegas, where the mayor Carolyn Goodman, said to CNN that city's casinos are not going to open soon. There is still a lot of people out there who are still afraid to get infected, especially people who works inside a casino. Goodman said that she wish to re-open soon in time but unfortunately this decision is not her to make but it needs to come from Nevada Governor and he has not said anything yet, in this regard.
