What Happens in Vegas if No One Stays in Vegas?

Many conference organizers seem determined to go forward, but are enacting a variety of screenings and rules.

SaaStr, a business-software conference set for next week in San Jose, Calif., said it would bar any residents of the most affected countries — China, South Korea, Italy and Iran — as well as anyone who has visited those places in the past 60 days. All attendees will need to show a U.S. driver’s license or a passport to enter. Citizens of China, South Korea, Italy and Iran will also be subject to additional screening, organizers said, including passport checks to ensure they haven’t recently visited their home countries.

Organizers plan to check all attendees’ temperatures via “passive scanning.” They also banned handshakes and mandated that attendees wash their hands before each session. “This may create some lines,” the organizers said. “Our apologies.”

Attendees of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference in Orlando, Fla., next week are being told to tap elbows rather than shake hands. Attendees can also get medical-grade face masks at information booths.

Facebook, Twitter and Intel have said their employees will not attend South by Southwest, but organizers insisted on Tuesday that next week’s festival will go on.

Travel restrictions resulted in some cancellations by would-be attendees from China, Italy, South Korea and Japan for an international construction trade show set to start next week in Las Vegas, but organizers say registration numbers are still up from when the show last occurred three years ago. As part of their efforts to keep the more than 130,000 people expected to attend healthy, conference organizers say they will be distributing buttons or stickers that say “no handshakes.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/03/business/coronavirus-business-travel.html