AHS: No permits for Sun Met meeting

TWO KZN horses, Neptune’s Rain and Winter Blues, have been denied permits to travel to the Sun Met meeting due to a horse having died of African Horse Sickness (AHS) within a 30km radius of them.

Had the horses been staying under vector protected conditions they would have been allowed to travel. It is now too close to the meeting for the horses to fulfil the required quarantine measures and they have had to be scratched.

Kenilworth and Durbanville racecourses are within the AHS Controlled Area in the Western Cape.

Precautions

It has been recommended by state veterinarians that racehorse trainers planning to travel their horses in to the AHS Controlled Area should take the precautionary measure of setting up a vector protected facility, because AHS outbreaks are unpredictable these days due to changing weather patterns and global warming.

If for example the travel date had been set for January 22, vector protected stabling for the raiding horse should be set up 16 days before hand.

This involves firstly covering a normal yard stable with “80% shade cloth”, which has small holes and is usually used to cover cars.

Insect repellent

The cloth then has to be sprayed with insecticide every day and the horse has to be sprayed with insect repellent every day.

The horse would be allowed to go out and train or exercise around midday every day at a time when the Culicoides midge which carries the disease is inactive.

However, at all other times the horse must be within the vector protected facility.

An external auditor arrives at arbitrary times to check that the correct measures are being taken.

If, during the 16 day period, there is an AHS outbreak within a 30km radius, the horse is then required to undergo a RT-PCR test on the 14th day.

This diagnostic test returns a result of positive or negative for AHS within 4 hours.

Test negative

In the likely event of the test returning negative, the horse is then granted a permit to travel in to the AHS Controlled Area.

However, the horse would have to be transferred from the vector protected stabling directly on to a vector protected vehicle and would have to travel all the way to Cape Town without being allowed out.

There is apparently only one vector protected vehicle in the country suitable for transporting racehorses.

The reason the vector protection is required for 14 days before the RT-PCR test is done is because the longest possible incubation time for AHS is 14 days. Therefore, it is too late for the trainers of Neptune’s Rain and Winter Blues to do anything about it as the Met is less than two weeks away.

Dr Camilla Weyer, a Veterinary Research Officer at the Equine Research Centre in Cape Town, said it was not an arduous task to set up a vector protected facility and not overly expensive.

Sport horses have had it done in KZN in stabling which is less suited for the set up than racehorse stabling.

Vector protected

Among trainers in South Africa, apparently only the big yards of Mike de Kock, Sean Tarry and Geoff Woodruff have ever set up vector protected facilities.

De Kock and Tarry do it every year as a precautionary measure around this time of the year knowing they will be sending top horses down to Cape Town to race. Woodruff set up a vector protected facility last year.

In KZN the only vector protected facility ever set up in a racehorse yard was apparently done by Tarry at Summerveld in recent times.

This year De Kock set up a vector protected facility for two or three horses on January 6 with the view to travelling on January 22.

Permit granted

He later decided to send the horses down earlier and as there had been no AHS case within a 30km of Randjesfontein since January 6, he was granted a permit to travel in a normal float.

The “Movement Control Protocol” within the “AHS Control Policy” is based on the guidelines given in the OIE International Animal Health Code as well as South African and European legislation. Equine travel permits into the AHS Controlled area are granted or denied by veterinarians authorised by the Veterinary Administration of South Africa to make such decisions.