“Currently, there is not a known direct link or official governing body communicating back to RSA Conference that these individuals had symptoms at (the) conference or attended during the incubation period,” organizers wrote on the conference website.
“These two employees attended a cybersecurity conference in San Francisco last month and while we cannot confirm whether they contracted COVID-19 prior to, or after the conference, if you came into contact with our staff, please be vigilant in monitoring yourself for symptoms and follow recommended guidelines to prevent possible infection. Our thoughts are with our colleagues,” Exabeam wrote on Twitter, referring to the disease the coronavirus causes.
Conference organizers said more than 36,000 people attended the event — a drop from the previous year, which saw 42,000 conference-goers descend on San Francisco.
The two employees may have been at Exabeam’s booth at the conference, and the company cautioned anyone who visited its booth to monitor themselves for symptoms.
Exabeam has instituted work from home policies for its Foster City and Atlanta offices, spokeswoman Alyssa Pallotti said in an email.
The conference ran as planned from Feb. 24 to 28, but saw multiple sponsors pull out ahead of its start, each citing coronavirus concerns. Verizon, AT&T, IBM and others were among the companies that canceled sponsorship or pulled out altogether.
A wave of conference and meeting cancellations has hit the Bay Area recently, including the Game Developers Conference, which postponed its Moscone Center event that had been slated for later this month, and Endo 2020, the next conference scheduled for Moscone. On Saturday, San Francisco banned all non-essential gatherings in city-owned facilities, including the Moscone Center, for two weeks in an attempt to contain the coronavirus.
There were 160 confirmed cases of the virus in California and two people had died as of Tuesday. There were 99 confirmed cases in the Bay Area, and more than 10,000 Californians in self-quarantine.
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