Facebook announced Thursday it is canceling its annual F8 developers conference due to the coronavirus outbreak and instead only hosting the virtual component.

"Given the growing concerns around COVID-19, we’ve made the difficult decision to cancel the in-person component of F8 2020," Facebook Director of Developer Platforms and Programs Konstantinos Papamiltiadis wrote in a statement.

"This was a tough call to make — F8 is an incredibly important event for Facebook and it’s one of our favorite ways to celebrate all of you from around the world — but we need to prioritize the health and safety of our developer partners, employees and everyone who helps put F8 on. We explored other ways to keep the in-person part of F8, but it’s important to us to host an inclusive event and it didn’t feel right to have F8 without our international developers in attendance."

The conference was scheduled for May 5-6 in San Jose and regularly draws some 5,000 attendees annually. Instead of a physical conference, Papamiltiadis announced Facebook will be using "locally hosted events, videos and live streamed content" to convene developers around the world.

Facebook is just the latest company to cancel or modify its conference plans in the wake of the global coronavirus emergency. Microsoft also announced Thursday it is pulling out of the Game Developers Conference held in March in San Francisco.

"The health and safety of players, developers, employees, and our partners around the world is our top priority. Especially as the world is experiencing growing public health risks associated with coronavirus," the company said in a statement.

The number of confirmed cases worldwide has risen to close to 80,000, with the majority of those cases in China, according to the World Health Organization. More than 2,500 people have died.

There are 60 cases in the United States.

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SFGATE digital reporter Amy Graff contributed to this report.