Vaccines arrive on Island to fight deadly rabbit virus
Bunny owners got a rare bit of good news Monday with the arrival in B.C. of vaccines that offer possible protection against the deadly virus attacking feral rabbits on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland.
The provincial government said the emergency supply of vaccines from France will be distributed to 50 veterinary clinics that have made orders. A second batch is slated to arrive in early May.
Dr. Jane Pritchard, B.C.’s chief veterinary officer, said the virus that’s causing rabbit haemorrhagic disease is most closely related to a strain previously found in Spain in 2011-12.
“The vaccine that we went looking for was one that was from Europe that had a record of being most protective against that [Spanish] strain,” she said. “Our strain isn’t exactly the same, but that’s the closest vaccine that we could find.
“So we won’t really know how protective it is until we try it, I guess. It will be an unlicensed product coming into Canada that appears to have the best chance of giving us protection for our rabbit population.”
The B.C. outbreak began on Vancouver Island, and testing has confirmed the presence of the lethal illness in dead rabbits from Nanaimo, Comox, Courtenay, Parksville, Richmond and Delta.
The disease, which spreads easily and causes internal bleeding and organ damage, kills European or domestic rabbits, but is not known to affect rabbits native to North America and poses no risk to cats, dogs or humans.
Jennie Gordon said she’s registered her pet bunny, Saffron, to receive the vaccine from McKenzie Veterinary Services in Victoria.
“I’m not sure if I’ll be getting it from this shipment or the next shipment,” she said. “They were giving it to higher-risk rabbits — like 4-H rabbits — first, and I just have a solitary house bunny right now.”
Gordon said she hasn’t let anyone enter her home wearing shoes and no longer allows her rabbit out on the balcony for fear that it will contract the highly infectious disease, which is sometimes spread by insects.
“Even buying things at the grocery store I’m paranoid ; like where have these things been grown, right?”
Lois Fernyhough, vice-president of Vancouver Island Rabbit Breeders Association, said she and other breeders with large numbers of rabbits are taking a “wait and see” approach to the vaccine.
“I guess we’ll see what the cost will be, how effective it’s going to be and then sort of weigh our options after that,” she said. “But who knows if the vaccine is going to protect the rabbits effectively against this strain of the virus? What are the other repercussions if we do vaccinate? There’s a lot of questions.”
The Beacon Hill Children’s Farm has no plans to get its five bunnies vaccinated as they’ve been kept secluded from the public since before the outbreak began, said Chelsey Fonger, a farm worker. “It would just be an unnecessary procedure for them,” she said. “If we had them out in the public, or even if we were handling them day to day, that might have been something we considered. But our vet advised us that it wasn’t something totally necessary.
“We’re just going to keep them segregated until we get an okay from the vet to put them back in the public.”
Pritchard said it’s still unclear how long the outbreak will last or whether the virus is here to stay.
“There are no models of what happens when it’s introduced through a feral population, like this,” she said.
“Certainly, in Europe, where the rabbit population is susceptible, and many countries have it as an endemic disease, they control it in the pet population with vaccinations. But feral rabbits are very, very hard to protect and it’s just very sad.”