The South by Southwest music, film and technology conference, is the latest victim of coronavirus concerns.

The city of Austin declared a local disaster Friday that will prevent the event from taking place, Austin Mayor Steve Adler said at a news conference, even though there have been no confirmed cases of the virus in the Austin area.

SXSW, as it's known, had vowed to go on, despite recent developer conferences that were canceled by Facebook and Amazon.

Officials of SXSW described themselves as “devastated” by this development.

“This is the first time in 34 years that the March event will not take place,” the company said in a written statement. “We are now working through the ramifications of this unprecedented situation.”

The conference this year had several high profile speakers in place, including former presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton, Beto O'Rourke and Andrew Yang and Steve Jobs' widow Laurene Powell Jobs and rockers Ozzy Osbourne, director Judd Apatow and to Kim Kardashian West. Nearly 300,000 people attended in 2019.

The 10-day festival was set to begin March 13.

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Festival organizers had been saying for days that they wouldn't cancel, on the advice of local officials, who assured them that the Austin health department had approved.

Many companies had pulled out of SXSW, including Twitter, Facebook, Apple, IBM and Netflix and there's been much local debate about the organizer's decisions to continue.

In addition, a petition on Change.org describing SXSW as “irresponsible amid an outbreak” and requesting that it be canceled this year had garnered about 55,000 signatures at last check.

Beyond the losses to the festival, Texas Monthly points out caterers, ride-hailing drivers, bartenders and servers, tech crew and security staff, and many other rely on SXSW, the biggest event of the year in Austin, to pay their bills.

Austin public health officials previously backed SXSW’s decision to carry on, saying canceling the festival wouldn’t have made the city any safer from the virus.

But Dr. Mark Escott, interim medical director and health authority for Austin Public Health, said Friday that there now is evidence that allowing SXSW to take place could accelerate the spread of coronavirus.

The Austin Statesman contributed to this report.

Follow USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham (@jeffersongraham) on Twitter