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Many horse owners become acutely aware of Equine Herpesvirus (EHV) when there’s an outbreak or a reported positive test in your local community. The reality is that EHV is a permanent part of the equine environment – not just at horse shows, but across the population. 
Virtually all horses are exposed to the EHV-1 virus at a young age, and the virus hides out (is “latent”) in most horses without causing symptoms. The virus is intermittently shed from healthy horses into the environment, particularly in times of stress, and this is how horses around them end up getting exposed to higher levels of the virus and develop symptoms. This is also the reason that you may see small outbreaks at unrelated facilities – those horses didn’t necessarily catch the virus from each other or from a shared human contact; they may have experienced a stress response and become sick without exposure to another horse, or may have encountered a high viral shedder on property. This is also the reason that staying home is not the solution it might appear to be. Horses can (and do) become sick with EHV without having traveled in years, and can travel frequently without becoming sick or newly exposed to the virus. Similar to human diseases like COVID or the flu, equine infectious diseases can’t be 100% prevented. To help our community coexist with equine infectious diseases, USEF has successfully developed biosecurity protocols to accomplish the following: |
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- Prevent potential introduction of infectious disease pathogens
- Healthy horse entry protocols and vaccine requirements
- Identify cases of infections disease early
- Mandatory reporting of febrile horses (temperatures over 101.5F)
- Isolate potential infectious disease cases
- Mandatory submission of isolation plans which identify isolation areas for clinical or exposed cases during an outbreak
- Isolating sick or potentially exposed horses from others is the best way to limit diseases spread
- Protect horse health and allow safe continuation of competition
- Enhanced biosecurity to allow healthy horses to compete
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Assistance with developing and implementing biosecurity protocols for competition facilities is available to all USEF competition organizers. If an infectious disease outbreak does occur, USEF works with the competition organizer and state animal health officials to assist with any contact tracing and advise on the risk assessment and epidemiological investigation that state animal health authorities conduct. This includes an assessment of population demographics, contact rates, environmental conditions, laboratory findings, and the venue/horse management. Decisions about whether a show goes forward are usually reached together based on this assessment, with all three groups conferring about whether the event can continue with unexposed horses safely participating. Competition organizers are free to cancel an event at any time if desired. In the last three years, USEF has worked with organizers, state veterinarians, and competition veterinarians to successfully manage several infectious diseases occurrences on competition grounds while allowing the shows to continue. Two USEF shows had state quarantines on a group of horses on the show grounds and continued the show with no additional horses becoming sick. Our biosecurity protocols are backed by peer-reviewed science and years of experience to separate and protect unexposed horses from illness, but we need members’ help in keeping those practices top of mind. USEF will continue to focus efforts to ensure horse health and biosecurity are a priority and ask your help in doing the same. For more information on equine health and biosecurity please visit https://www.usef.org/learn/equine-health or email [email protected] For more information on EHV and best biosecurity practices, check out this webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObB8Zp7kOjM&t=9s |