Biogen Staffers Test Positive for Virus After Boston Meeting
Biogen Employees Test Positive for Covid-19 After Boston Meeting
(Bloomberg) -- Biogen Inc. said three employees have tested positive for the coronavirus after attending a meeting in Boston last week, while five others at the same meeting are presumed to have contracted the disease as state health officials await final confirmation.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based drugmaker said in a statement that a number of attendees reported varying degrees of flu-like symptoms after the meeting. Three cases were confirmed as Covid-19 and some others were diagnosed as the flu. At a news conference Friday, Massachusetts Health and Human Services Secretary Mary Lou Sudders added the five new presumed cases from the Biogen meeting, bringing the total cases of COVID-19 in Massachusetts to eight.
One of the three people who initially tested positive after the Biogen event lived in the affluent Boston suburb of Wellesley, according to the town’s health department. The person, who is self-isolating at home, was in close contact with a person who got ill after the meeting, the press release said.
The local middle and elementary schools attended by two of the person’s children sent students home early Friday so that the buildings could be cleaned and sanitized.
Biogen’s strategic management meeting hosted about 175 attendees at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf, a company spokeswoman confirmed in an email. The hotel is less than a five-minute walk from historic Faneuil Hall Marketplace and the New England Aquarium.
All the infected Biogen employees are doing well and under the care of health professionals, according to the company, which said two of the Covid-19 patients are based in Europe and the third is based in the U.S. outside of Massachusetts.
Biogen said all meeting attendees have been directed to work from home for two weeks, regardless if they have symptoms. Biogen is restricting travel through the end of March to mitigate spread of the virus and plans to monitor the situation.
The company said it has been in regular contact with public health officials since the first cases were reported. The illnesses were reported Thursday evening by local news outlet WCVB-TV.
A Marriott spokesperson said health authorities informed the hotel on Thursday afternoon of the three confirmed cases, involving people who attended the meeting from Feb. 24 to 27. “We are working closely with the appropriate public health authorities and are following their guidance,” Lucy Slosser, spokesperson for Boston Marriott Long Wharf wrote in an emailed statement. “The well-being of our guests and associates is of paramount importance.”
On Friday morning, it appeared to be business as usual at the hotel, which is located next to Faneuil Hall, one of the city’s busiest tourist spots. An employee said health officials were on-site meeting with management and a manager declined to comment. People staying there said they were unaware that virus cases were linked to a meeting at the hotel.
“I didn’t realize they had the conference here,” said a woman from Connecticut who had stayed for one night and declined to provide her name. “What is there to do? Go home and watch for symptoms?”
--With assistance from Tom Moroney and Michael McDonald.
To contact the reporters on this story: Bailey Lipschultz in New York at blipschultz@bloomberg.net;Janet Wu in Boston at janetwu1@bloomberg.net;Prashant Gopal in Boston at pgopal2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Catherine Larkin at clarkin4@bloomberg.net, Flynn McRoberts
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