A scientific meeting that was to be held to discuss coronaviruses was cancelled due to the spread of the novel coronavirus, Quartz reported.
The official meeting of the International Nidovirus Symposium -- Nido2020-- has been postponed to 2021, officials declared on Monday. The conference, which takes place once every three years, was set to take place this May 10 to 14 in the Netherlands.
Marjolein Kikkert, a microbiologist who was leading the conference, told Quartz that the officials started noticing that people were hesitant to register for the meet due to all the uncertainty around coronavirus pandemic.
In the nidovirus symposium meetings, attendees present their research papers, find collaboration opportunities and meet other microbiologists.
She mentioned that the outbreak in Europe has made the biologists and scientists set a good example as coronavirologists to not further spread the virus themselves.
The meeting was to be held to discuss ‘nidovirus’, which is an order of viruses that includes coronaviruses, like SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus going around now), SARS-CoV (severe acute respiratory syndrome, which emerged in 2003), and MERS (Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, which emerged in 2012). The order also includes arteriviruses, a group that can infect horses, pigs, monkeys, and mice, and roniviruses, a group that can infect shellfish.
Usually, about 150 to 200 scientists attend the meeting, according to a source quoted in the Quartz report.