Still cautious despite no new flu cases

ENCOURAGING news that the BHA had no new positive tests for equine influenza emerge yesterday was balanced by the fact that the sport remained in limbo.

Racing’s ruling body said they had had the results of 720 tests.

But more than 2,100 tests had been conducted by yesterday afternoon with a further 5,000 swabs distributed among the 174 stables around the country that remained in lockdown.

Laboratory staff, who have identified the strain of the EI virus, will work throughout the weekend in the hope that the BHA can make a decision By MarcusTownend on Monday about when they can restart a sport which closed down last Thursday.

The sport and betting industry have already lost an estimated £25million with yesterday’s prestigious Newbury fixture a casualty.

The big fear is an extended shutdown that would endanger next month’s Cheltenham Festival.

No new positive tests have surfaced at the Cheshire stable of Grand Nationalwinning trainer Donald McCain, who has had six horses test positive and is at the centre of the outbreak.

All stables which had runners at meetings where a McCain horse competed have been placed in quarantine.

Cautiously welcoming the news of no new positives, David Sykes, the BHA’s director of equine health and welfare, said: ‘There are many more tests to analyse and the nature of the incubation period means a negative test now does not mean that that horse has never had this flu virus.

‘So these yards continue to remain locked down and their horses kept under observation. Though hundreds of tests have been completed already, there are many hundreds more to be analysed over the weekend before we will have a fuller picture.

‘I’d advise against anyone drawing any conclusions or making any predictions based on this set of results.’

The best news for the BHA was that a case in the Cleveland stable of trainer Rebecca Menzies that had been reported as ‘suspicious’, with one of three horses under scrutiny, had proved negative.

Evidence that EI had spread from McCain’s stable would have been damaging.