Taken from veterinarian, Dr. Penny Grove of Felton, Pennsylvania Facebook Page
NOTICE – regarding the EHV-1 neuro cases in VA and now in Unionville, PA a PA State Veterinarian sent out the following email today: Good afternoon. I apologize for the delay in getting this information to you. I wanted to wait until we had definitive laboratory confirmation which I just received within the past 15 minutes. Although the rumor mill has been running all day, I can confirm now that we had a case of EHV-1, neuropathic type in a horse in Unionville, Chester County. This case is related to the EHV-1 neuro case in Virginia earlier this month. As this horse was a trace-out from that situation, the premises has been under a movement restriction since last Saturday. Horses have not been coming or going from this premises since 4/3/14 when the positive horse arrived.
Please help me to get accurate information to your equine clients. Despite the sometimes severe nature of this disease and the tragedy it can be for severely affected horses and those who care for them, this situation is not a widespread calamity or cause for panic. This virus does not travel for hundreds of yards through the air as some have been saying. Yes, this is an equine-dense geographical area and we will not quarantine every horse in the greater-Unionville area, because the quarantines are based on scientific risk factors not fear. Thus horses that have known or potential exposure and their associated materials (tack, trailers, bedding, etc.) are and will be under quarantine and horses that are simply somewhere in the vicinity will not be restricted. The management and personnel of the premises involved have been very cooperative and are taking great pains to clean and disinfect the premises and to maintain the highest level of biosecurity within the premises.
In my opinion, the most important information to get out to equine owners is the simplest and should be in place always, not just when there is a known issue: don’t panic but don’t share water buckets, twitches, tack, or anything else with other equine premises, try to prevent horses from having nose to nose contact with others at shows and events where many horses are commingled, and don’t ignore signs of illness in a horse and take it to an event anyway. EHV-1 is nearly ubiquitous in equine populations in the US and we cannot predict when and where it will become a problem next.
