The Waste Management Symposia on Tuesday said both attendees at this year’s event who showed signs of possible COVID-19 infection had tested negative.
Test results for “Attendee #1” were received Tuesday, one day after the results for “Attendee #2,” according to a statement from James Gallagher, chairman of the board for the annual nuclear cleanup and waste management conference in Phoenix.
Both participants are believed to be staffers with the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management, which each year sends a large contingent of presenters and personnel to the Waste Management Symposia.
Barring further developments, this is the last of the daily WMS updates on the COVID-19 situation, Gallagher wrote. However, organizers “will notify WM2020 conference attendees of any new developments,” he added.
The 2020 Waste Management Symposia drew roughly 2,100 people to the Phoenix Convention Center from March 8-12. That was down by about 10% from the usual attendance, due to travel concerns related to the respiratory disease. Some attendees came from National Nuclear Security Administration sites, such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Gallagher issued the first post-conference attendee update on March 16, writing that one participant was being tested for infection and another was limiting contact with others after experiencing “flu-like symptoms.”
Symptoms of COVID-19 can be similar to those of the flu, including fever and shortness of breath. However, the mortality rate for COVID-19 appears to be significantly higher– between 3% and 4%, compared to under 0.1% for the seasonal flu, according to the World Health Organization.
As of Thursday afternoon, there were more than 70,000 confirmed infections in the United States, Johns Hopkins University said in its COVID-19 tracker. There have been more than 1,000 deaths, domestically.
