More than seven weeks after Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak's stay-at-home orders were put in place to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus, the bustling heart of Las Vegas remains one of the bleakest faces of the nation's pandemic-driven crisis.

A significant change at the top of Nevada's employment department was announced Tuesday with the director stepping down.

Gov. Steve Sisolak has praised Nevadans for adhering to COVID-19 shutdown directives, but if control measures are reduced too soon, the disease will likely spread beyond control, said Brian Labus, an epidemiology expert at the UNLV School of Public Health.

A few neon lights at the casinos are still flashing, “open 24 hours”, stands above a closed burger bar. A homeless person sets up in a restaurant entrance for the night. On a pedestrian bridge over the Strip, the legendary entertainment mile in Las Vegas, Cici Ballard - pink hair, tattooed forearms - stands with friends and points to the deserted sidewalks below them, the closed bars, the silhouettes of the hotel towers. "It's kind of scary," she says, pulling her cigarette deeply.

Joseph Guerrero is done with the Las Vegas hospitality industry.

From 2007 to 2009, the Great Recession affected Las Vegas more than anywhere else in the United States. The Las Vegas’s economy will, once again, be dealt a difficult hand as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic, according to Stephen M. Miller, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) and economics professor at UNLV's Lee Business School.

Nevada could have the largest number of unemployed workers in the US due to the coronavirus pandemic. In a state where an estimated one in three workers is employed by the leisure and hospitality industry, 320,000 Nevada workers are at risk, twice the number in the late 2000s, which could push Nevada’s unemployment rate above 30 percent, according to a recent report by Las Vegas-based economic research firm Applied Analysis, reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Casinos with fewer than 500 employees can participate in the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program if their gaming revenue last year was less than $1 million and comprised less than half of business revenue, under new SBA guidance.