Last week, the CDC recommended vaccinated people return to wearing masks in public indoor settings in parts of the country with high COVID-19 transmission rates.
Nevada adopted the CDC’s updated guidance on masks, citing areas such as Clark County — home of the Las Vegas Strip — as having “substantial or high transmission” of the virus.
NADA will keep an eye on federal, state and local guidelines and default to whichever is safest, Stanton said. The association has no plans to require attendees to be fully vaccinated or to show vaccination cards.
“We’re going to let the data drive those decisions — the data and the expertise of the CDC,” Stanton said of mask mandates and other COVID-19 protocols. “I’m not a doctor, and we’re not scientists, so we’re going to rely on their expertise to inform our decisions.”
NADA’s last in-person show was in February 2020 — not long before the coronavirus began to spread dramatically throughout the U.S. The show drew a crowd in the “mid-20,000s,” according to the association.
Despite the unknowns and uncertainties amid the ongoing pandemic, Stanton said he hopes the 2022 event will be “bigger” than the 2020 show and expects total attendance around 25,000.
NADA did not disclose registration totals from the all-virtual show.
Stanton said the association now has a virtual show playbook in hand, if needed, and is more prepared for any coronavirus-related hiccups.
“You learn with every opportunity, and we certainly learned a lot,” Stanton said.
“Our team, I thought, did an amazing job with what they had to work with last year, and I’m confident that they’ll do an amazing job regardless of the circumstances that present themselves.”
