Washington State Veterinarian Position ON Equine Herpes

I'm Susan Allen. Should we stop going down the road, cancel the rodeo, the fair, the horse show? Rodeo social media sites are a buzz about the one confimed case of Equine Herpes EHV1 in our state, an 18 year old barrel horse that had been competing in throughout the NW that was euthanized last week at WSU. Well I posed that question to the acting Washington State Veterinarian Dr. Scott Haskell

HASKELL: I like to have your listeners know what we are recommending, our position statement on this s, the State Veterinarian office, we are recommending vaccination and increased and improved bio security. We are not recommending any quarantined , we are not recommending any fair or rodeo to be stopped . We want to have people go on and have fun. So this Herpes virus, the wild type is a common resident population found in equine respiratory system so it's not the bizarre neurogenic that is reportable by state and federal and international authorities, it's a pretty simple wild type WADDL laboratories the state diagnostic lab has told me that the vaccine works great that 85-95 % of all horses' vaccinated will be protected from this condition. We happy with this decision virologist and that's our recommendation.

There you have it! Right from the horse's......horse vet's...... as in our Washington State Veterinarian's mouth.