Facebook cancels 4,000-person US summit amid coronavirus fears

Facebook Inc said on Friday it had canceled its global marketing summit scheduled for next month in San Francisco due to coronavirus-related risks.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we canceled our global marketing summit due to evolving public health risks related to coronavirus,” a company spokesman said.

The event, scheduled for March 9 to March 12 at the Moscone Center, was expected to see over 4,000 participants.

Earlier this week, Mobile World Congress (MWC), the annual telecoms industry gathering in Barcelona, was canceled after a mass exodus by exhibitors on coronavirus fears.

Major U.S. tech companies including Facebook, Cisco Systems Inc and AT&T had pulled out of MWC.

The virus, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has killed over 1,300 people so far and infected more than 63,800 people on the Chinese mainland.