Concerns over the coronavirus are putting an end to some of the biggest business conferences of the year. IBM is the latest to cancel its main annual event, which was scheduled to draw 30 000 people to San Francisco in May.

IBM said Wednesday it will instead stream video and other online content in place of the in-person convention for IBM Think 2020. The company also said it’s adopting stricter travel requirements for employees. That includes the suspension of all domestic travel for internal meetings, a ban on attending external events with more than a thousand attendees to the end of this month and a two-week self-quarantine for those travelling to at-risk countries.

Companies are choosing to call off events that attract people from all over the world and minimise business travel over fears that the virus could spread. Google and Facebook both canceled their flagship conferences in the last week.

Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, two other massive gatherings for the technology industry, were also scrapped. On Monday, Twitter and Square, two companies run by Jack Dorsey, advised their global employees to work from home. — Reported by Olivia Carville, (c) 2020 Bloomberg LP