South by Southwest in Austin will not be cancelled this year, organizers say, despite mounting concern that the tech and culture festival will expose the Texas city to the coronavirus.

Facebook, Intel and Twitter have all pulled out of the event. A petition on Change.org with over 32,000 signatures is also demanding that the event be scrapped.

The festival is set to begin on the 13 March. In a statement, organizers said: “We hope that people follow the science, implement the recommendations of public health agencies, and continue to participate in the activities that make our world connected.”

Across the US, industry conferences and company gatherings are being cancelled almost every day. Cities and counties nationwide have declared states of emergency as more than 100 cases of the virus have been reported.

The tech sector has been particularly hard hit. On Monday, Google announced it would be cancelling Cloud Next in San Francisco this year. The cloud computing conference attracted 30,000 participants last year.

Instead of cancelling the entirety of the event, Google has decided to change this year’s iteration to a virtual conference. While the exact details are unclear, it proposes to livestream keynote speakers, breakout sessions and Q&As, according to a statement.

Microsoft has also cancelled its Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Summit, which was scheduled for 16 March. The conference was set to take place in Seattle. The announcement came after six people died from coronavirus in Washington state in recent weeks.

And Facebook has called off F8, a major annual conference for developers and entrepreneurs, scheduled for early May in San Jose.

“This was a tough call to make,” wrote Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook’s director of platform partnerships, in a blog. “But we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on.”

Numerous other events with a large number of international attendees have already been cancelled or downsized.

A UN session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), an annual event that promotes gender equality and women’s empowerment, is to be limited to one day, instead of the two weeks as planned. Organizers have also discouraged member states from sending delegations, AP reported.

The American Physical Society (APS) canceled its March conference in Denver. About 10,000 physicists were expected to attend.

The decision was based on “the fact that a large number of attendees at this meeting are coming from outside the US, including countries where the CDC upgraded its warning to level 3 as recently as 29 February,” the APS said in a statement. Countries on the CDC level 3 warning include South Korea, Italy, Iran and China. The CDC recommends against non-essential travel to them.

Travel restrictions, flights cancellations and health concerns also lead to the cancellation of the World Petrochemical Conference, slated for 24 March in New Orleans. The event’s organizers had expected delegates from 47 countries to attend.

Last year, over 19,000 of South by Southwest’s participants were international. Some experts say that given how quickly the virus transmits, it would be safer to cancel such gatherings.

“Right now there is no transmission in the Austin area,” said Dr Peter Jay Hotez of the Baylor College of Medicine. “However, there is a potential alternative risk if people are traveling to SXSW, either from abroad or where transmission is under way in the Seattle area.”

Despite the risks, locals say that their concerns are being ignored because of the financial interests at play. In 2018, the event brought in $350m for the city.

“Their silence is sending a very big message to the concerned citizens of Austin,” said Shayla Lee, who started the change.org petition. “I challenge the City of Austin and SXSW to do the right thing at this sensitive time.”