Sixteen people who attended the Ethereum Community Conference, or EthCC, in Paris on March 3-5, have now turned out to be positive for the new coronavirus.
With an impressive list of speakers that included Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin, the annual conference drew around 600 attendees.
One of the participants created a shared spreadsheet that is monitoring the incidence of the virus at the conference.
The virus, unexpected host
Jordan Lyall, leader of ConsenSys Codefi, a blockchain operating system for commerce and finance, is one of the last participants in the conference to report his positivity to the virus.
The 37-year-old, who is voluntarily self-isolating at his home outside of Los Angeles, says he is recovering after experiencing a range of flu-like symptoms.
Lyall still doesn't know how he contracted the virus. The people at the conference were paying attention, he said. They beat their elbows and fists instead of handshakes, and kept at a safe distance from each other.
Perhaps it was the utensils used to serve the food from the buffet. Perhaps they were the few people with whom they shook hands. Maybe it was in the air. But nobody expected to take it. Zhen Yu Yong - who works on "Zen" - was the first conference participant to publicly announce that he had tested positive for the virus.
The co-founder of the decentralized access service provider TorusLabs tweeted that he was diagnosed on March 11. Like Lyall, Zen has no idea how he got the disease.
Although he attended other events before the EthCC in Paris, Zen is pretty sure that, with the timing of his symptoms, he took the coronavirus to the EthCC.
Jérôme de Tychey, one of the organizers of the event, said that the EthCC conference has repeatedly communicated to the participants via email the "best practices" to avoid the spread of the disease and that all participants have paid the utmost attention in respecting them.
The spreadsheet
Anyone who has attended EthCC and has the symptoms of coronavirus is asked to enter their name and other information on a spreadsheet that is constantly updated by the Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake.
Infected people include German computer engineer Afri Schoedon, author of the standard ERC-777 token Jacques Dafflon, the banker for investments Werner Jacob, the staff of Gnosis Marco Correia, Johannes Pfeffer of Atpar, the CEO of Chainsafe Aidan Hyman and the CTO of Kleros Clément Lesaege.
Three other people whose identities were not revealed also reported positive results. According to the spreadsheet, eight other people are currently waiting for the test results.
Following Sunday's Center for Disease Control's recommendation to cancel all events with more than 50 people, several states in the United States have asked bars and restaurants to close.
In addition, numerous conferences on cryptocurrencies, including the Consensus or Ethereal Summit, have moved on the web or have been postponed or canceled.
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