Last call comes early
On Tuesday, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced new restrictions on casinos as the state and the country as a whole suffers through a massive new surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Per Executive Order No. 194, casinos will not be permitted to serve food or drinks from 10:00pm to 5:00am, except for room service and takeout. The mitigation measures take effect on Thursday, November 12, at 5:00am.
The casinos themselves can remain open and gambling can continue. The only things that are affected are food and beverage services.
The same rules apply to restaurants, bars, clubs, lounges, and similar businesses when it comes to indoor dining. Those venues can still serve customers outdoors after 10:00pm and can still accept takeout and delivery orders.
“We must come together as a state to once again beat back this deadly virus and to save lives,” said Governor Murphy in a press release.
He expanded on his feelings in a press conference:
To be clear, the last thing I want to do or any of us want to do is to shut our economy back down, and thankfully, we are not at that point. No one up here wants to take the type of broad and all-encompassing actions like those we had to take in March. We are acting with more precision-based actions on what we are seeing on the ground.
Restrictions aren’t being received well
According to the Press of Atlantic City, people are not happy about the new measures. A customer at the William Hill sportsbook at Bally’s gave his gave his server an extra tip when she brought him his final beer of the night.
“It’s crazy what (Murphy) is doing to people like her,” he said. “How is she supposed to make a living? This nonsense has to stop.”
Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo from Atlantic County posted on Facebook that the “blanket restrictions” were not the way to go and that they were “put in place due to soring [sic] North Jersey COVID cases.”
Atlantic County is in South Jersey, about an hour’s drive from Philadelphia.
State Senator Michael Testa didn’t think the restrictions are “precision-based,” but rather “a destructive overreaction.”
“Murphy should be targeting areas of high virus spread and taking the time to evaluate the data and facts,” Testa said in a statement on Tuesday. “There is no reason to lock things down gratuitously in South Jersey.”
The Casino Association of New Jersey was more diplomatic, saying it understood why the Governor signed the order, but that regardless, the industry “has taken extraordinary measures to safely welcome back thousands of hardworking employees and valued guests, while also helping to minimize the exposure of Atlantic City casino property guests, our employees, and our local community to the COVID-19 virus.”
New Jersey was one of the hardest hit states early in the pandemic, but also had one of the best responses, getting its new daily COVID-19 case counts way down by the summer. Lately, however, figures have skyrocketed. On July 23, the seven-day average for new daily cases was just 212. It is now 2,663.
