Self-Reported COVID-19 Infections and Social Mixing Behavior at Oncology Meetings

ABSTRACT

Purpose/Objective(s) The COVID-19 pandemic largely suspended conventional in-person scientific meetings because of the risk of disease spread. In the era of vaccination and social distancing practices, meetings have slowly begun to return to in-person formats. We surveyed attendees and potential attendees of two United States oncology meetings to identify rates of mixing behavior and the subsequent rate of self-reported COVID-19 infection. Materials/Methods We collected reported social mixing behavior and COVID-19 positivity of actual and potential in-person oncology meeting attendees of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Quality Care Symposium in Boston, Massachusetts on September 24-25, 2021, and the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois on October 24-27, 2021 via survey. Participants were identified through publicly available meeting materials and targeted via email when possible. Recruitment was also conducted through Twitter and a radiation oncology newsletter, as well as an anonymous link made available to emailed recruits, with sharing encouraged. In-person respondents to the later ASTRO survey who had attended the ASCO meeting were excluded from the analysis. Statistical significance was determined using Fisher's exact test for rates of COVID-19 positivity and the chi-squared statistic for differences in group characteristics, with a cutoff for statistical significance p<0.05. Results Response rates from attendees with publicly available emails were 27.4% for the ASCO meeting and 14.3% for the ASTRO meeting. The ASCO survey produced 94 responses, with 48 responding as in-person attendees. The ASTRO survey produced 370 responses, with 267 responding as in-person attendees. Across both meetings, 3 of 308 (1.0%) of in-person attendees versus 2 of 141 (1.4%) of non-attendees tested positive for COVID-19 (p=0.65). Among in-person attendees, there were similar low COVID-19 positivity rates among those spending more (>20) vs less (≤20) hours attending live sessions (2.2% vs 0%, p=0.25) and between those who went to indoor social events vs those who did not during the meeting periods (0.8% vs 1.9%, p=0.44). Attendees largely felt that they would feel comfortable attending additional in-person meetings after experiencing the ASCO (87.5%) or ASTRO (91.9%) meetings and that mask compliance was good or excellent at the ASCO (100%) and ASTRO (94.6%) meetings. Conclusion This study indicates that in-person meetings do not seem to be contributing to high rates of new COVID-19 infections in the setting of mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and decreased room capacity allowances. The rate of self-reported COVID-19 infection of both in-person attendees and non-attendees was very low and the meetings were successful at creating an environment where participants felt safe. These findings support the possibility of a path forward for at least partially in-person conferences as new variants emerge and COVID-19 becomes endemic.