By Equestrian Life
The FEI has announced international competitions in mainland Europe will continue in mid-April following a six-week shutdown to stop the spread of EHV-1.
Following a meeting held last week involving major stakeholders, the FEI has released a roadmap of ‘Return to Competition’ measures outlining their plan.
“We are in a position now to ensure that we can return to competitions on the 12th of April and then all the preventive measures are being put in place to ensure that they’re as safe as possible,” said FEI Secretary General Sabrina Ibáñez.
The current outbreak of EHV-1 was first detected in Valencia, Spain on the 20th of February and there have been 18 horse deaths as a result.
“There has been also an incredible community effort to really ensure that the sick horses got the treatment that they deserved and that healthy horses could return home safely,” said Ms Ibáñez.
Ms Ibáñez said the coming week will be spent finalising the legal bylaws of the measures with further information to be made public.
“[We need] to make it more flexible so that we can have competitions take place so that we can ensure that our horses and riders also have plenty of competitions available so that they can prepare and train for the Olympic Games and for the Paralympic Games,” she said.
FEI Veterinary Director Dr Göran Åkerström said while this outbreak is now under control to an extent, the disease will continue to be a threat in the future.
“We can never eradicate EHV-1 as it is endemic in so many countries around the world,” he said. “But we clearly need to ensure that this type of outbreak never happens again. And that any future outbreaks are contained before they can cause the same type of devastating effects that we’ve seen with this one.”
“There must be traceability and provisions in place to manage and shutdown outbreaks,” said Dr Åkerström. “We cannot do this on our own. We need a community effort and the measures we have put in place, both short term and long term, and especially how effective we will be implementing those will depend on our ability as a community to collaborate and to fully endorse and implement them in each of our respective areas of responsibility.”
“The good news is that the Valencia strain of the virus has been identified as A2254-N752 genotype,” he said. “It’s the common virus that circulates in Europe.”
The measures released by the FEI include a series of temporary provisions, which will remain in place until 30 May 2021, providing a science-based safety margin to allow for monitoring of any further related outbreaks.
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