You mean to say that the physical casino in your country were not closed in the time of pandemic ? That's strange because the pandemic has the impact on the whole world and not a single country was safe from this virus. The countries who didn't applied the early lockdown , later had to pay the price when patients affected from covid19 rise to the alarming numbers.
would love to see comparison data on all countries number of cases x lockdown duration x lockdown start date.
but still, wouldn't be surprised to know some countries had casinos open, specially countries where lobby is strong, in Brazil they reopened churches before schools
many messed up things going on in Politics
I would not be surprised of this as well, we must remember that some economic sectors are very strong and as such have influence over the policies governments can take and they can change them to their favor, so it would not be surprising that in a country where the gambling industry was strong and politicians accepted bribes the physical casinos remained open for longer or were not even closed on the first place, for example where I live all businesses were open before schools showing how little the government cares about the education of the children.