Facebook Inc. will not be holding its annual F8 developer conference this year on account of the global coronavirus outbreak, the social network said today.

“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,” Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook’s director of platform partnerships, wrote in a post today.

F8 was scheduled to take place on May 5-6 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. In lieu of the conference, Papamiltiadis wrote that Facebook will set up “locally hosted events” and livestreamed presentations.

Facebook’s decision was to a certain degree to be expected. The social network two weeks ago canceled its Global Marketing Summit, which was scheduled to take place in March, and more recently withdrew from the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Elsewhere in the tech sector, the mobile industry’s MWC megaconference was scrapped, while a number of major companies pulled out of the RSA Conference.

Just about every major industry is feeling the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down more than 870 points, or 3.2%, the S&P 500 lost 3.26% and the Nasdaq Composite has slid nearly 3.5% compared with the Wednesday close. On the other side of the pond, the  pan-European STOXX Europe 600 Index closed 3.6% lower.

Facebook’s shares are down 2.9% and the other members of the so-called FAANG group of key tech stocks have all taken a hit as well. Apple Inc. is down 5.5%, Amazon.com Inc. 3.9%, Netflix Inc. 0.6% and Google LLC parent Alphabet Inc. 4.5% since the opening bell. 

There are more than 82,000 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide. Earlier today, California Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters that the state is monitoring more than 8,400 people for signs of exposure to the contagion and said 33 individuals tested positive, five of whom have left the state.

Photo: Facebook