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Have to agree with their decision.
This is from the RP
Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson among over 100 yards who cannot have runners until stables are confirmed as free of infection.
I just wonder what it means. Are there already infected horses in the two stables or is testing not yet finished?
Seems like the initial intention was to suspend racing for the yards involved at the two courses on Wednesday but then the BHA have decided on cancel all fixtures until thorough testing can be completed.
I wonder if the BHA can trace how the three vaccinated McCain horses caught equine flu. Dr Richard Newton (AHT) thinks a slight mutation enabled the virus to infect vaccinated horses and a new vaccine could take years to develop. A case was reported in an Irish yard in January and was contained with an advisory note issued on the 18th. The BHA issued its warning the next day. The McCain horses are the first cases from an active yard in vaccinated beasts.
I agree the BHA has acted promptly and efficiently. To lose merely a week’s racing (important parts of which may be rescheduled) would be the best case scenario, I hope the thousands of tests being done do not reveal any further cases. Rossdales equine vet Piet Ramzan has a different perspective:
“Kneejerk and ill-advised reaction from @BHAPressOffice in my view. If we’re in for a ‘bad’ flu year (which we should all expect periodically, despite generally excellent vaccination protocols in U.K.) then shutting down racing for a day or even a month won’t prevent it happening. Racing cancelled and our vets rushing around swabbing hundreds of quarantined horses..all for a non-notifiable, endemic disease for which we should expect periodic flare-ups anyway. Newsflash, @BHAPressOffice, @NTFnews: it’s equine flu, not Ebola…”
I think he is a jerk! The BHA is doing everything to limit the damage. However, if it is a bad flu year and if, as may be likely, further case/s pop up between next week and Cheltenham/Aintree/early Classics what then will the BHA do? Has it not set a precedent by which, logically, its response must be a further shutdown, possibly one of a longer duration? Unless it is going to somehow regard a future case, one similar to that of the McCain horses, as different or isolated we will go to sleep every night for the next five weeks expecting to find the Festival is off upon awakening.
That Ramzan is a clown for those comments – it is like he is equating it to human flu with his periodic flare up and bad flu year. Not sure I would want him as my vet.
How incompetent would the BHA look if they allowed racing to resume tomorrow and then other cases started popping up especially in actual horses that had run and then got sick thus exposing more horses to it when they were in the racecourse stables.
The number one priority is to contain and isolate the spread and if that means suspending racing (for however long) until they can get a clearer picture of the scope of the problem and the best way to treat it then so be it.
Interesting to note that the Animal Health Trust said the virus to develop the current vaccine is now 15 yrs old
“I just wonder what it means. Are there already infected horses in the two stables or is testing not yet finished?”
They aren’t the only ones, just singled out as those who people will recognise. I imagine they are stables who had runners that may have had contact with potentially infected stables. Rarely a meeting that doesn’t have at least one Nicholls and Henderson runner.
I think they have done totally the right thing by shutting down racing across the country until all horses from the yards involved have been tested.
Horse welfare must be a priority most especially for the new born foals for whom this could prove fatal in their early months.
My worry is that if more cases come to light in the next six days we could be looking at many more weeks of quarantine and imagine if this had come to light a week before Cheltenham at least everything possible seems to be being put in place to ensure yards have a clean bill of health.
Hopefully it will be totally isolated and all will resume as normal next Thursday and it will be no worse than having racing cancelled for extreme weather…fingers crossed.
JacThings turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out...I’ve not got much knowledge of equine health but, from what I’ve read today, equine flu doesn’t sound a lot worse than human flu. Obviously human society does not grind to a halt in the face of “normal” flu outbreaks. So my question is what is so bad about equine flu that it has caused what seems, at first glance, such an extreme reaction? Not trying to downplay things as it’s obviously very serious, I’m just not understanding why! If anyone can help shed some light that would be much appreciated.
@marlingford
Hi Marlingford, I’m not sure what you mean by “normal flu”, but it is estimated that an average of
600 people a year die from complications of flu. In some years this can rise to over 10,000. A UK
study in 2013 estimated over 13,000 deaths resulting from flu in 2008-2009. Obviously some particular
strains can be catastrophic, such as in the 1918 pandemic which is estimated to have taken between 40
and 50 million lives. I think when most people say they have “got the Flu” and go off work, in all
likelihood they have a nasty virus, but not flu. I don’t know if they have identified this particular
strain of equine flu, but if, as you mention, it’s on a par with that of the human variety, it’s pretty
serious stuff.Apparently Chelmsford races have handed over the food prepared for tonights cancelled meeting to local homeless people
Nice gesture but wont the druggies and paraffins turn their nose up at bags of oats and horsefeed?
There are some over the top reactions going on at the moment, last night Look North interviewed the owner of the Grand St Leger hotel near Doncaster racecourse and he described the meeting being abandoned as a disaster, now come on last week meetings were cancelled for snow and frost it is a regular occurrence the Doncaster meeting wasn’t a huge meet with about 1,000 people due to attend for him to say this was ridculous it is a hotel surely they have other guests and people who go there for none racing purposes.
Chelmsford also is a meeting place not just a racecourse so for them to be giving away the food, come on there are some hard luck stories that are difficult to believe all the racecourses are insured for these sort of events.
LD73 wrote:
Interesting to note that the Animal Health Trust said the virus to develop the current vaccine is now 15 yrs oldThis:
Equine influenza virus (EIV) undergoes continuous antigenic drift, and vaccine protection from immunogenic stimulation is maximised when vaccines strains have greater homogeneity to circulating strains. Subclinically affected vaccinated horses can shed live virus and represent a threat to unvaccinated or inappropriately vaccinated horses. Neutralising immunity leading to an absence of infection is rare. (Paillot, 2014.) An OIE expert surveillance panel annually assesses circulating strains and makes relevant vaccine recommendations.from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equine_influenzawould suggest that equine flu vaccines are, like human flu vaccines, regularly tweaked to maximise protection against the current strains/mutations
The ‘History’ section in the above article is interesting, particularly that on the 1872 outbreak in the USA
It would seem that equine flu manifests itself in very much the same way as human flu: debilitation and weakness for a week or two, then recovery for 90% of those infected
The very rough stat for human flu mortality is 10% too: 500,000 annually from 5,000,000 cases; though this obviously doesn’t take into account the very different stats found by age-group and between developed and undeveloped countries
It’s the highly contagious nature of flu and it’s propensity for rapid spread through a population that’s of most concern.
The BHA have acted wisely and correctly IMVHO
It was only a few years ago that poultry farmers had their stock placed under similar movement restrictions by DEFRA due to an outbreak of avian flu
The Cheltenham Festival was cancelled in 2001 during the foot-and-mouth outbreak
this seems a good link for updates:
https://www.aht.org.uk/news/statement-on-equine-influenza-outbreaks-in-vaccinated-horses
did see a report somewhere that while human flu vaccines are redone pretty much annually, those for animals are on a much longer schedule.
AHT reports here:
https://www.aht.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Equiflunet-outbreaks-2019-v3.pdf
that FC1 viruses have recently been identified in France, Ireland and Belgium among vaccinated horses for the first time since 2009/10.
I remember an equine influenza epidemic in the 1970s, there was a vaccine but it wasn’t that effective, all the ponies at the yard came down with it, the ones vaccinated were less ill but still got it, the thoroughbreds were the most seriously ill and took much longer to recover. An area like Newmarket would have serious implications with many foals infected. I also remember a strangles outbreak at a similar time, my pony was the only one not to get it so we assumed he had already had it. Strangles is more serious and has more implications.
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