Our consensus building tool outlines five potential management routes for EHV-1, balancing veterinary input (visits, sampling, testing and costs) against time to clear. 

Considering your yard environment, select your priority and the tool will suggest a route (or routes) and provide a downloadable template to implement the route you choose.

When index case is diagnosed with neurological herpes, isolate that horse from the rest of the group and follow the steps.

A consensus on monitoring and testing should be reached between all parties involved. 

For successful EHV-1 management, all horses on the property must be assumed to be infected until proven otherwise.

A consensus amongst all stakeholders (premises owners/manager, horse owners, and vets) should be achieved.

This consensus is made by all stakeholders agreeing on a monitoring and testing strategy that balances risk reduction with affordability and the intensity of veterinary input (horses may be cleared to return to competition more quickly with increasing levels of veterinary input and laboratory testing).

Stakeholders should meet and decide the level of risk reduction which is affordable and acceptable for all.

Usually all horses on a premises will follow the same plan. However if complete segregation and isolation of horses on the premises into separate groups can be genuinely achieved, managing groups differently can be considered. 

Where you have chosen to manage groups differently, having a map of the premises available at the consensus meeting is helpful so that potential cross-over points between segregated areas can be considered and eliminated. 

You should ensure communication is open and transparent with all stakeholders. 

Who to communicate with

With other vets

Decide how vets managing the outbreak will communicate amongst each other to share clinical and laboratory findings: a Whatsapp group or email circulation list are useful tools for this purpose. Obtain agreement from all owners and the premises owner that if there is clinical suspicion and laboratory evidence of spread, vets can communicate this across all vets and veterinary practices.

With horse owners involved in the outbreak

Decide whether all owners will have access to the same group or have a separate all vets and owners comms group where owners can pose general and specific questions about EHV-1 as well as disseminate results and information that they wish to share about their own horses. Obtain agreement from all owners and the premises owner that if there is clinical suspicion and laboratory evidence of spread, vets can communicate this to the other owners and their vets.

With the horse owning public locally

Respect the horse and premise owners right to confidentiality. Help the premises owner decides if they want to publicly announce that there has been a neurological herpes case on their yard: this is usually only necessary if the premises is used as a venue for competitions and gatherings.

With the wider veterinary community

With the wider veterinary community
Equine Infectious Disease Surveillance (EIDS) is an industry supported group working to control and prevent infectious disease occurrences in our UK equine population. Veterinary surgeons dealing with outbreaks will be able to utilise EIDS's free advice line, to support and enhance outbreak control approaches. EIDS also oversees a surveillance network of collaborating UK laboratories, enabling the monitoring of pathogen strains and the epidemiology of endemic diseases. With the consent of treating veterinary surgeons and horse owners, EIDS reports anonymised disease occurrences. This effort not only educates and raises awareness but may also encourage equine keepers to publicly disclose outbreaks and help reduce the stigma associated with disease occurrences.

With regulators and sporting bodies

Consider relevant guidance or regulations which apply to the horses. The obligation to inform regulators/sporting bodies sits with horse owner not their vet, nevertheless horse ownersmay rely on their vets to point them towards their regulator or governing body when infectious disease occurs.

 Racehorse trainer's duty to report communicable disease

 NTF codes of practice: biosecurity

 Equibiosafe app for iOS

 Equibiosafe app for android

 BEF EIDAG Advice Notes for Member Bodies

 BEF EIDAG Biosecurity Handbook for Venues

• Isolate the clinical case(s) and stop all horse movement on and off the property. 
• The in-contact population into small discrete sub-groups for which husbandry (exercise, feeding, mucking out etc) can be delivered separately to avoid infection transfer.
• Resist the temptation to move in-contact horses around extensively.
• Make sure you have good records of within-premises movement.
• Checklist: Biosecurity on equine premises during a disease outbreak.

It may be possible to implement different testing and monitoring strategies for separate segregated risk (e.g. most intense for groups of animals previously in close contact with the index case; less intense for groups of animals previously fairly separate from the index case). 

Separate strategies should only be considered where there is a high level of confidence that segregation of the groups of in-contact horses is effective.

We've provided five potential management routes, balancing veterinary input against time to clear. Select your priority below for a recommended approach and a template to manage EHV.

 A practitioner's guide to understanding equine infectious disease diagnostics in the United Kingdom Part 1: How to optimise sampling approaches and a guide to agent detection testing methods

 A practitioner's guide to understanding infectious disease diagnostics in the United Kingdom Part 2: Serological diagnostic testing methods and diagnostic test result interpretation

 Equine herpesvirus-1: Dealing practically but effectively with an ever present threat

 BEF Signs of Health

 BEF TPR

 BEF Biosecurity at Home

 How disease spreads through your yard, British Grooms Association

 BEF Advice for Professionals

 Equine Herpes Virus, Phil Ivens

 EHV Vaccination, Phil Ivens