• Casino Virus Closings

Health officials in Cherokee, N.C., are investigating a cluster of coronavirus cases after five casino employees tested positive for the virus within two weeks while at work.

The Jackson County, N.C. Department of Public Health said in a news release Monday the cases were identified among Harrah’s Cherokee Casino employees who work in the table games section.

The school district says the parent is an employee at Winstar World Casino. News 12 wanted to find out what the world's biggest casino is doing amid the global pandemic. People in casinos should wear masks to avoid breathing germs. With the starting point of the virus so close to Australia and with so many people traveling from Asia to Australia regularly – especially for tourism and gambling purposes – Australian casino patrons should be extra careful. The casino computer virus is a malicious virus that upon running the infected file, copies the File Allocation Tables (FATs) to random-access memory (RAM), then deletes the FAT from the hard disk. It challenges the user to a game of Jackpot of which they have 5 credits to play with, hence the name.

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'All positive employees are following isolation orders,' the release states. 'The investigation is ongoing.'

Health authorities and the Eastern Band of the Cherokees, which owns the casino, are working to identify any additional close contacts of the employees.

The regional manager of the casino said no other employees or customers have been identified as having close contacts with the employee who have tested positive.

The casino closed in March when the pandemic hit and reopened in late May with 30% capacity. The business said in May employees would be having daily health checks.

Casino Virus Closings

The Associated Press contributed to this story.