Louis Mihalyka From Laurel Oak Bloodstock Talks About Flu Outbreak
Friday 31st August: Since our initial summary of the equine influenza situation on Sunday, things have moved dramatically and it has been difficult to bring all the facts together, because by the time I would have dictated it, circumstances would have changed again.
Now we are probably in a position once again where we can at least consolidate the equine influenza situation as it affects various states hence this update to our Grandstand View email list.
The confirmed news today that now eight of ten horses from Anthony Cummings Randwick stables have tested positive to equine influenza has a massive bearing on the NSW racing industry.
It is the news that the industry has dreaded.
It does mean that the quarantine and standstill order in NSW may be in place for another thirty days, and that could even be extended to fifty days, certainly as it extends to Randwick-based horses as Randwick is now in complete lockdown.
Here is a summary of the various situations.
Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania: there have been no instances of equine influenza in any of these states and the standstill orders in each of these states are expected to be lifted at midday on Friday, with the result that thoroughbred racing will be able to resume on Saturday.
As indicated in yesterday''s message to Grandstand View readers, the Victorian Department of Primary Industry (DPI) has restricted racing to one meeting per day for the first five days. As a consequence of that, as you may already be aware, there is an eleven-race meeting scheduled for Caulfield on Saturday and a twelve-race meeting scheduled for Cranbourne on Sunday.
This afternoon Racing Victoria announced very conservative measures with regard to not just the movement of horses into the state, but also the movement of humans involved with horses. Hugh Bowman and Darren Beadman have been prevented from riding at the Caulfield meeting, while interstate trainers whose horses are running at the meeting have also been prevented from attending.
At the race meeting itself they are also setting up exclusion zones so that humans and horses are kept well apart other than the necessary professionals such as Victoria-based jockeys, strappers and trainers.
Other news impacting Victorian racing is that John Moore has announced that his horses will not be coming from Hong Kong to the Melbourne Spring Carnival, while it was earlier announced that the Japanese horses will not be coming to the Spring Carnival, more due to their own equine influenza problems rather than Victoria''s.
From the breeding point of view in Victoria, once the standstill orders cease on Friday afternoon, then mares can move as per normal to their various studs to be covered, and with the exception of those shuttle stallions that are still in quarantine, the Victorian breeding season will operate fairly normally, except that interstate broodmares cannot go to Victorian stallions, and Victorian mares for at least the time being cannot go to NSW or Queensland stallions.
While the restriction of the shuttle stallions in the quarantine station at Eastern Creek has been extended I am not sure at this moment in time whether that extension also applies to the Victorian quarantine-based stallions otherwise they will be out of quarantine around 20 September.
NSW Racing: As a result of today''s devastating news from Randwick, there will be no racing at Randwick for somewhere between thirty and fifty days, and no Randwick-based horses are expected to be allowed to race in that time.
On the positive side recent precautionary tests that have taken place on horses at Warwick Farm, Rosehill, Dubbo and Newcastle have all been clear of EI, and at this stage all of those training environments are operating normally. The exceptions are when an individual stable has shown an elevated temperature, then that stable has to have a total shutdown until the results of the tests have come back and the horses cannot work during that period. With the processing of suspected EI tests being sped up those shutdowns have been generally well under 24 hours.
As of yesterday, there was discussion of trying to kick-start the NSW racing by having quarantined meetings at Randwick for Randwick-based horses and Warwick Farm for Warwick Farm-based horses. Rosehill has not entered such a discussion as I suspect there are probably not enough horses trained at Rosehill to create a race meeting. The idea was to conduct races separately at the two venues with only trainers, jockeys and strappers present and no public. Canterbury would be converted to a betting auditorium with bookmakers and full raceday facilities for the public to attend and bet on the races. The confirmation of EI at Randwick has now put this plan on hold, however an announcement this afternoon is that Racing NSW and the AJC will be applying to the DPI to have permission to run a race meeting at Warwick Farm for Warwick Farm-based horses only as soon as next Saturday week, 8 September. I know that Warwick Farm trainers have been asked to provide details f potential runners at such a meeting including class of horse, distance etc. so that they can formulate the races to suit the horses rather than the other way around.
A similar meeting has also been mooted for Newcastle on Saturday 15 September. The biggest problem is the circumstances of individual horses at the moment, as those that are in work cannot go for a spell and those that are spelling cannot come into work. Others that are for example currently at pretraining venues can continue to pretrain at those venues.
NSW Breeding: NSW breeding is also in turmoil. The announcement today that the forty stallions stuck in quarantine (I think on Sunday I said the figure was only sixteen, perhaps I mistook that for Darley, who have around sixteen stallions in there themselves) will be obliged to stay in quarantine until the middle of October as there have been instances of a number of stallions becoming sick with the virus. Rumours persist that one very high-profile stallion is genuinely sick and has no chance of covering this season, but that is not something that I want to publicise here in case it is just a rumour.
Shuttle stallions coming out three weeks late were already going to be a major issue and if they come out six weeks late then for many the breeding season is as good as over anyhow, and there becomes a greater likelihood that stallions will simply be returned home by their Northern Hemisphere owners without covering here.
The continuing discovery of the virus (all continually linked to the prime sources of Centennial Park and Maitland, I must point out) mean that the standstill orders for horses will continue for some time yet in NSW. The immediate impact of that is in the fact that mares cannot be moved to the properties where the stallions are to be covered. Consequently while the breeding season has started the only mares that can be covered at the moment are those that are on a property where the stallion actually is. As a consequence of that situation there are a lot of late changes with broodmare owners with mares ready to cover taking the opportunity of being covered by an available stallion rather than risking any further delay.
As the majority of broodmares are on broodmare farms with no stallions there are a lot of mares that would be ready to be covered in the next few weeks that at the moment are not able to go to stallions.
If things settle down then there will be applications from broodmare farms for special licence to be able to move the mares off the farms to the studs where the stallions are. Quite what restrictions are put on those are yet to be seen, because the options include literally walking a mare to the stallion farm, all mares to one farm only but the mare must stay there, rather than be walked in and walked out, etc. And then different broodmare farms will have different protocols and risk profiles which may impact on who does get a licence and who does not, or indeed the timing of the licence. That in turn will impact on when and whether individual mares will be able to be covered. Regardless of whatever happens there is no doubt that the foal crop for this year will be down significantly, even if things settle down in the not-too-distant future.
Queensland Racing and Breeding: there is less actual news coming out of Queensland than from the other states however at this stage they are theoretically on the same timeframe as NSW. However as all their EI outbreaks are linked to Centennial Park and Maitland, they may reach a point sooner than NSW where they are comfortable that the virus has been contained and normal horse movements can resume.
At the moment, the standstill requirements are in place in Queensland as well, although after being locked down for three days horses are now allowed to walk to the track to be trained, or certainly that is the case in Brisbane and at the Gold Coast.
The EI Virus Status: In big-picture terms the DPI continues on the basic tactic of confinement and elimination of the virus rather than vaccination. Apparently vaccination is not 100% effective and is very costly, and in all countries where the virus has previously existed it has been eradicated. The main mission of the DPI is to achieve that eradication in NSW and Queensland as well.
There are apparently over 400,000 horses in NSW, which makes the task somewhat more difficult and while there are approximately 488 confirmed of EI on sixteen different properties (and those numbers change very regularly) the DPI is comfortable that the spread of the virus has been restricted. If the standstill procedures were not in place then it would be rampant throughout the horse population and the current status in terms of the potential damage done is considered to be a satisfactory result and an indication that they are on track with containing and then eradicating the virus.
At this stage all the evidence points to the fact that a horse came in from Japan with the flu virus; somehow that got to Centennial Park; and some horses from Centennial Park went to a show at Maitland where they had over 200 horses and all subsequent outbreaks of the virus can be linked to either the Maitland or the Centennial Park horses. That in itself provides the DPI with solid evidence that the virus has been contained and providing the standstill restrictions remain in place that it will run its course amongst the horses that currently have it and currently have been exposed to it.
One difference between previously-reported strains of the virus and the one that currently exists in Australia is that the virus can remain dormant in horses without any clinical evidence of the virus, and it is some days later before the horses actually show signs. If they showed signs earlier then it would be a lot easier to control because at the moment horses with the virus are in stable environments contaminating other horses in the same stable while nobody actually knows that the carrier has the virus. Short of blood-testing every horse, which would stretch facilities to the limit, there is no way of identifying which horses have it and which horses do not.
That is all the news for the moment, and hopefully another report to you won''t be necessary because the news starts to become all good.
Best regards, Louis
Monday 27th August: Given the magnitude and seriousness of the equine influenza outbreak and its ramifications, it is appopriate that I provide a summary of the situation to our Grandstand View readers, particularly with the number of enquiries that we have received over the past 24 hours.
The Problem
Equine influenza has never occurred in Australia before. It is a highly contagious viral disease which spreads rapidly through horse populations. Affected horses not previously vaccinated will show a high fever, nasal discharge and persistent hacking cough, and they can be depressed and off their feed. It is generally only fatal in horses that may have a lower resistance, such as older horses or foals.
It is a very debilitating illness, not unlike influenza in humans (as opposed to the common cold) and it takes horses two to three months to recover. Because it is so contagious if it spread through the general horse community, racing could be shut down for two to three months because there would literally be no horses fit to race.
The problem is that there are two locations of the outbreak at the moment. The first occurred in the Eastern Creek Quarantine Station where a stallion showed signs of having the virus. If the outbreak had been restricted to here, then that would have naturally caused problems for the horses that were in the quarantine station, but that is all, as it would effectively be the quarantine station doing its job and preventing an infectious disease from spreading into the country.
The real problem is that the equine influenza virus has been discovered in a number of horses in a Centennial Park riding school. This means that the virus is now out in the general horse community.
The highly-contagious nature of the virus means that it therefore has the potential to spread throughout the country as horses move from one community to another. Further, the virus can be carried by humans, which means that people coming into contact with the Centennial Park horses are also potential carriers as well.
As a consequence of that the only way of preventing the spread of the virus is to create a total lock-down of all horse movements. Where your horse is is where your horse should stay. It takes 72 hours for the symptoms of the virus to appear if a horse has been contaminated. Consequently that is the reason for the 72-hour lock-down.
During that period the authorities will be tracking the movements of all horses in and out of the Centennial Park riding school to determine where those horses are and what other horse communities they have potentially infected. Further, it gives the opportunity for any horses that have been infected to develop the symptoms if they in fact will do so. The problem as I now understand it is that there are approximately six stallions showing signs of the influenza in the quarantine station, while there are at least eleven horses in the Centennial Park riding school as confirmed cases of equine influenza, but worse still is that there are another six horses that have left the Centennial Park riding school recently and are now out in the general horse community also showing signs of having the influenza.
The lock-down that has been put in place is simply the protocol that has been established for any potential infectious virus and these are the rules that have been set down some time ago and are now being followed, because of the seriousness of the situation.
Ramifications on Racing
As part of the ban on horse movements throughout the country, there will be no racing for at least three days throughout Australia. After three days, the decisions will be made on a rolling 24-hour basis, depending on what has occurred in the meantime, and what the authorities advise. The only reason that Darwin was able to race yesterday, while all other locations closed down, was that the entire horse population of Darwin is housed on-track and to race did not require "horse movements".
The best-case result from the racing point of view is that the lock-down has isolated all instances of the equine influenza, and if there are no further outbreaks reported, then racing can resume after 72 hours. At this stage Victoria are hoping to rrsume racing on Wednesday.
A likelihood is that because NSW is the only state where infections have occurred to-date, racing may be shut down for longer in NSW but other states may resume racing and have other protocols, such as a ban on interstate movement of horses.
The worst-case scenario is that continuing outbreaks of the virus are found in the general horse community, which will mean that the lock-down will have to continue indefinitely.
Racehorses that are trained on-course can continue training, however horses that are trained off-course are not allowed to leave their stables, even if the racetrack is only across the road. The horses will literally be confined to the stables, and limited to daily walking.
The flow-through effect will be horrendous for the racing industry, due to lost prizemoney, lost betting turnover, and the loss of key lead-up races to major Spring Carnival events.
Ramifications on Breeding
The ramifications on the breeding industry of the equine influenza virus are twofold.
Firstly the stallions in the quarantine station have to stay there until thirty days after their last contact with a horse carrying the equine influenza virus. At last call that meant approximately 20 September, which means the stallions involved (I believe the number is sixteen) will not be able to leave quarantine and move to their respective studs and start the covering season until that date. Therefore they will miss the first three weeks of the breeding season.
That presents breeders booked to these stallions with three sets of circumstances. Firstly their mare would not be due to be covered until after 20 September, which means no decision needs to be made. Secondly mares due to be covered before 20 September will either have to miss a cycle and wait till they cycle again to be covered by the stallion they are booked to. The third choice is that mares ready to be covered before 20 September will have to move to another stallion if the breeder decides they would rather an early cover than go to the original stallion of choice.
With heavily-booked stallions, the flow-on effect may also cause problems, because even with a normal start to the breeding season, these stallions may already be literally covering at a saturation rate of three to four times a day. It may be physically beyond them to cover the backlog and catch up. That will only impact on the most heavily-booked stallions. Further, some stallions simply do not have the libido to do extra covers per day and that also will make it difficult for them to catch up on the backlog. That is the best-case result with regard to the effect on breeding with respect to the stallions in quarantine. The other impact on breeding is that if the lock-down of horse movements continues, then mares will not be able to go to stallions to be covered. I believe that there is currently a ban on horse movements in NSW to next Friday, 31 August, the day before the cobering season starts. Also, stallion owners may insist on blood test of mares before the will cover the mare to be totally guaranteed to avoid infection.
The worst-case scenario for the breeding industry on both fronts is that the lock-down continues, which will prevent all mares being covered by stallions, except those that are on the property where the stallion is. The worst-case result from the quarantined stallions point of view is that if the rumours that six stallions are now affected rather than one, then the thirty-day exclusion period will keep being extended, and those stallions that are in the quarantine station will have their release from quarantine to their respective studs continually postponed beyond 20 September.
Further, if stallions do contract the virus, then those individual stallions will effectively be out for the season anyhow, because they will be too sick to cover.
The third potential risk is that if the stallions are delayed in quarantine much longer, then the Northern Hemisphere owners of the individual stallions may decide to eliminate all risk with their stallions and withdraw them from service for the current breeding season. Most of the stallions have got much greater earning capacity in the Northern Hemisphere than they do in the Southern, therefore the owners may not be willing to risk their stallions at all.
The next few days will be very interesting to see how stallion owners and breeders react to the prevailing circumstances. There is the potential for some serious jockeying for positions in the remaining nominations available to the non-shuttle stallions.
As of Friday, the studs were officially expecting their stallions to be released on 20 September, however yesterday''s report of the virus spreading at the quarantine station will have a significant impact on that, and it will be very interesting to hear the formal news and status of the stallions in the quarantine station.
While the racing side will resolve itself, for better or worse, in the coming days, as stables and raceclubs will have to adhere to whatever protocols are put in place by the authorities, the breeding side will be much more demanding as there is an increasing likelihood that many breeders will be wanting to change their bookings in the coming weeks, but a lot will depend on what the official status of the various stallions is, which will require honesty from the studs involved to clarify what is fact and what is rumour with regard to the various stallions.
I will report in with more news as appropriate.
Best regards,
Louis Mihalyka
