The Bay Area Braces for Coronavirus Closures and Cancellations

Update, March 6, 5:30pm: San Francisco Mayor London Breed issued an advisory urging residents to cancel or postpone “non-essential events” such as sports games and concerts to stop the spread of coronavirus. Read more.

The Children’s Discovery Museum in San Jose announced Thursday that it will be closed through March 10 after one of its employees came in contact with a person who tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The employee is currently awaiting test results as the museum comes up with next steps.

“We are looking at all our protocols moving forward,” the musuem’s public relations manager, Cecilia Clark, told San Francisco Chronicle. “We will be cleaning and sanitizing the entire museum with a third-party professional before we open to the public.”

The announcement comes after an advisory from Santa Clara County’s public health department suggesting to postpone mass gatherings such as sports games and cultural events. Contra Costa County has also issued an advisory for people over 50 years old to avoid large events.

Over a dozen tech conferences in the Bay Area have been canceled or postponed due to the outbreak, including Lesbians Who Tech and the Game Developers Conference, both now taking place in the summer. The Reboot Ideas Festival in San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center, a conference about issues captivating the Jewish world, has been postponed. The Gucci Cruise 2021 fashion show, slated for San Francisco in May, is now canceled. The Tactile Dome exhibit, where visitors crawl through a dark, textured labyrinth in San Francisco’s Exploratorium, is closed indefinitely.

The Stanford Theater in Palo Alto has suspended all movie screenings, and San Francisco’s International Ocean Film Festival at Cowell Theater has been delayed. And Stanford University’s Cantor Arts Center and Anderson Collection have suspended public tours through April 15.

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