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| - Organisers of the World Mobile Congress were holding urgent talks Wednesday over the fate of the world's top mobile trade fair following an exodus of industry heavyweights over coronavirus fears, a source close to the meeting said. "We're leaning towards a cancellation. It should be announced later in the day," the source told AFP. The GSMA, the mobile trade association which organises the annual show, had originally been due to convene a meeting of its members on Friday to discuss whether or not to cancel the event, which this year runs from February 24-27. But the date was brought forward as an increasing number of industry heavyweights pulled out. Just hours before the meeting, the latest big names to drop out were Vodafone, Nokia, Deutsche Telekom, Britain's BT and Rakuten of Japan, following in the footsteps of Intel, Facebook, Cisco and China's Vivo. In a statement on Twitter echoing earlier withdrawals, Vodafone said: "While the potential risk is hard to quantify accurately at this stage, we have taken this decision because we place the utmost importance in the safety and wellbeing of our employees, customers and partners." Organisers refused to comment on the emergency talks, issuing a statement saying the spread of the virus was "a fast-changing situation which GSMA is monitoring closely". "This includes regularly meeting with global and Spanish health experts -- as well as our partners -- to ensure the wellbeing of attendees," it said. "We have already implemented additional health measures ahead of MWC 2020 and will continue to seek expert medical advice on a frequent basis." The annual Barcelona-based congress normally draws more than 100,000 people, including between 5,000 and 6,000 participants from China, organisers say. But this year, participation has been hit by the outbreak of a deadly new coronavirus which first emerged in China at the end of the year and has now claimed more than 1,100 lives with another 44,600 infected. Should MWC2020 be cancelled, the decision would be bad news for Barcelona, Spain's second city, with the massive trade show expected to bring in some 492 million euros ($536 million), organisers say. Conference organisers only began to see cancellations on February 4 when South Korea's LG Electronics, which occupies one of the largest spaces at the show, said it was pulling out to "remove the risk of exposing hundreds of LG employees to international travel.. as the virus continues to spread across borders". At that point, just under 500 people had died after contracting the virus. China's top smartphone manufacturer Huawei as well as its smaller rival ZTE, said their plans were unchanged, but pledged their executives and staff would first undergo a self-imposed two-week quarantine period, while ZTE said its stand and equipment would be disinfected daily. The organisers also sought to reassure exhibitors, saying it would step up security measures, impose restrictions on visitors from China and have staff on hand to take visitors' temperatures. But it wasn't enough, and the trickle of withdrawals quickly turned into a deluge with dozens of companies pulling out of the show. So far, Spain has only registered two confirmed cases of infection, one in the Canary Islands and one in Mallorca in the Balearic Islands. Although almost all of the deaths and infections have been in mainland China, the newly-named COVID-19 virus has been detected in 30 locations around the world in what the World Health Organization has warned poses a "very grave threat for the rest of the world". The GSMA's board includes representatives of some 25 operators in the mobile industry, among them companies like Orange, Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, Verizon and NTT Docomo. burs-hmw/rl
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