A number of attendees at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) annual meeting tested positive for COVID-19 following the event that brought thousands to a hotel in New Orleans amid an uptick in cases and hospitalizations nationwide.
While COVID-19 vaccines were required, and attendees were asked to complete a personal health screening each morning, masks were only “encouraged,” leading few to wear them in the tightly packed indoor space.
It’s yet to be seen if medical meetings will become superspreader events, but some physicians feel the lack of mitigation measures being taken by many of their own is a disheartening message for public health.
“It’s just frustrating,” Seth Trueger, MD, MPH, of Northwestern University in Chicago, told MedPage Today.
Trueger attended the meeting for a limited time, participating in two panels. He is immunocompromised, having developed an autoimmune reaction to a recently diagnosed microscopic cancer. He said that he remained masked the vast majority of the time he was there, except for when it was his turn to speak on the panels.
He pointed out that if medical meetings are held without enough mitigation measures, they may be missing out on having some of the “best and the brightest” physicians attend due to the potential risks.
Another important consideration, he noted, is that if physicians fall ill after attending meetings, they are going to be out of work for several days — at the very least — when hospitals are already short-staffed.
“So much of this is just so hard to wrap our heads around … the individual, societal, and long-term risks,” Trueger said. “One way that I think about it is a stitch in time saves nine … the less we have to do long-term to keep the pandemic under control.”
Though he hasn’t had any symptoms and hasn’t tested positive since attending the meeting, he’s heard of others who have.
George Willis, MD, of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, told MedPage Today he tested positive for COVID after attending the meeting.
Willis, who is vaccinated and boosted, had cough, chills, and aches over the weekend, but was pretty much back to normal by Monday. He said he masked up most the time he was at the meeting, pointing out the tightly packed rooms and lack of ability to social distance as problems.
“Certainly people who were immunocompromised or people who were trying to practice being safe … it was difficult for them to be able to do so,” he noted.
In response to reports of COVID cases following the meeting, SAEM CEO Megan Schagrin, MBA, told MedPage Today in an email, “SAEM has been notified of attendees from the recent annual meeting in New Orleans who have since tested positive for COVID-19. Recognizing it is not possible to remove all risks, in particular concerning COVID-19, SAEM implemented a vaccination policy for all attendees, requested daily personal health screenings, and welcomed mask wearing.”
“For those who have tested COVID-19 positive, we hope for mild cases and wish them a very speedy recovery,” she added. “For all SAEM22 attendees, we have encouraged them to monitor for symptoms and follow current CDC guidelines on testing, isolation, and quarantine.”
Earlier this spring, Willis co-chaired the planning committee for another medical meeting. Part of the message they focused on was “COVID is still real, it’s still spreading, and we are strongly recommending masks while in conference rooms,” he said.
“I personally don’t think the same precautions were taken at SAEM,” Willis said. “I did not see a large number of hand sanitizers that were available; there was no clear message about whether or not masks were encouraged, or certainly nothing about them being required … and the rooms were really, really, really tight.”
He acknowledged that it’s hard to say whether some of the tightly packed spaces at the event were the result of poor planning or the venue itself, adding that another challenge of organizing meetings is putting restrictions on attendees when the city the event is taking place in doesn’t have them.
“I think that people just need to realize that the pandemic is still here, COVID is still around, and we still should be trying to promote a safe environment where people can freely do what they want to do,” while being conscientious of others, Willis said.