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After Zika threat passes, ICANN confirms return to Puerto Rico

Kevin Murphy, December 16, 2016, Domain Policy

ICANN will hold its first public meeting of 2018 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which was originally supposed to the venue for this October’s meeting.
ICANN moved ICANN 57 from San Juan to Hyderabad, India in May, at the height of the scare about the Zika virus.
Zika is spread by mosquitoes and sex and can cause horrible birth defects. An epidemic, beginning in 2015, saw thousands affected in the Americas and South-East Asia.
Puerto Rico was one of the affected regions. At the time of the ICANN postponement, numerous government travel warnings were in effect.
The World Health Organization announced last month that the epidemic is over.
It was always understood that Puerto Rico had been merely postponed rather than permanently canceled, and ICANN’s board of directors this week resolved to hold the March 2018 meeting — ICANN 61 — there.

ICANN diverts from Puerto Rico to India to avoid Zika

Kevin Murphy, May 17, 2016, Domain Policy

ICANN has confirmed that its 57th public meeting will not be held, as originally planned, in Puerto Rico.
Instead, it is asking community members to instead head to Hyderabad, India, this November.
Those Las Vegas rumors turned out not to be true. However, on the up-side, those Las Vegas rumors turned out not to be true!
The decision was to relocate made to the a “state of emergency” being declared in Puerto Rico due to the Zika virus.
Zika is spread by mosquitoes and male sexual partners and can cause devastating birth defects in kids.
Latest figures from the US Center for Disease Control put infections in US territories at 701, three of whom were travelers.
ICANN said in a blog post this evening:

This decision was based on available research and information and the fact that Puerto Rico has declared a state of emergency due to the ongoing Zika virus outbreak. We believe that the Zika virus poses a significant enough threat that we need to postpone going to Puerto Rico for the health and safety of our community and our ICANN team, just as we had to postpone ICANN52 and relocate from Marrakech to Singapore due to the Ebola virus outbreak in 2014.

It’s the second of this year’s meetings to be relocated due to Zika. June’s Panama meeting has been moved to Helsinki.
ICANN said that the new venue for ICANN 57, which takes place from November 3 to 9 this year, is the Hyderabad International Convention Centre.
It’s said that ICANN will take a seven-figure hit to its bank balance in order to cancel the PR meeting.