This year, America is marking the beginning of summer by reopening Nevada casinos. After being shut down since March, the casinos will open its doors to visitors on the 4th of June. As casino operators do in China, Nevada gaming authorities have established new rules for gamblers and employees. When visitors come to Nevada casino now, they will be required to wear facial masks, use hand sanitizers, and gather in smaller groups in gaming areas. Their temperature will be measured at the front entrance. Playing roulettes or poker in facial masks might be awkward, but casino operators in Nevada are convinced that no inconveniences will discourage people from returning to gambling. When casinos reopened last week in Louisiana and Mississippi, gamblers took the trouble to drive to them from other states and waited in lines for hours to resume gambling after several months of enforced inaction. It is expected that players will flood to Nevada with similar impatience.
Lockdown is being eased in other countries as well. Although no casinos are said to reopen in the United Kingdom just yet, Britons will be sending children back to school at the beginning of June. From the first day of summer, UK citizens are also permitted to gather in small groups outside and make purchases in some shops. Quarantine restrictions have partially been lifted in Italy. Before the end of May, Italians resumed going to gyms, swimming pools, and sport centers. In the middle of June, they will start enjoying cinemas and theatres. Travelling from and to Italy will also be allowed soon, and visitors from EU countries will be able to cross Italian borders without going into a quarantine.
June brings more freedom also to Finns. They can now eat in restaurants, coffee shops, and other public places. They can even celebrate birthdays and weddings outside, provided their groups do not exceed fifty people. Outdoor sports are also permitted to begin their summer season, though the Finnish football league is supposed to start training only at the end of the month. There is also a strong possibility that foreign travel will be given a green light on the 3rd of June, when the Finnish government is expected to voice its opinion about travelling abroad. And it well may be that Finland will take a page from America's book and will reopen its land-based casinos. Finnish people, admittedly one of the most enthusiastic gamblers in Europe, will be thrilled to reenter Helsinki Casino or return to betting on slot machines in supermarkets, gas stations, kiosks, and restaurants.
During the quarantine, after Veikkaus had shut down all casinos and slot machines and suspended lottery draws in March, Finnish players were obliged to migrate online. Disallowed to visit Casino Helsinki, Feel Vegas, and Palaamot, they turned to the best online casinos, or, as they call them in Finnish, parhaat nettikasinot, in search of lucrative bonuses and beautifully designed video games. Statistics show that more than 3,000 new gamblers registered on Veikkaus digital casinos in the time of the coronavirus pandemic. Almost 80 percent of Finns try their luck in the games of chance once or even several times a week. It was, therefore, expected that, with brick-and-mortar casinos emptied of customers and employees, online gambling websites will gain more appeal in players' eyes.
It was also expected that problem gambling rates in Finland will jump during the lockdown. Analysts reasoned that people would be tempted to wager more money, while they were stuck at home, deprived of their usual tasks and bored. Those who were laid off from jobs were predicted to resort to online gambling in the hope of earning an income. Yet, almost three months into the quarantine, it is clear that these predictions are wrong. Problem gambling rates have the same tendency during the pandemic that they have consistently been showing for the past several years. Although more Finns joined online casinos over the past four years, there was no corresponding rise in problem gambling rates. Quite the contrary, last year, problem gambling rates fell 0.3 points to 3 percent. The pathological gambling prevalence rate remained flat in 2019. The percentage of those considered at risk of becoming addicted to gambling decreased from 15 percent to 10.7 percent. There is no danger, therefore, that Finnish people will come out of the quarantine with gambling disorder, as many analysts fear.
Doctors in Finland repeatedly say that people should worry not about compulsive gambling during the coronavirus pandemic but about the second wave of the disease. Once the Finnish government announced that coronavirus restrictions would be loosened, doctors began to warn the public about the likely acceleration of the infection rate. They foresee that a number of ill people in Finland will jump in several weeks by 40 percent. If this is the case, doctors hope that the Finnish government will be able to react quickly to a worsening health situation in the country and will provide all necessary treatment to newly infected patients.