Parking Lot Quarantine For World Equestrian Games
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International events like the World Equestrian Games are important and high profile competitions. They are also great places for disease transmission, with large numbers of horses from different areas brought together, along with associated stressors that can increase the risk of disease.
For the 2010 games at the Kentucky Horse Park, a long term parking lot at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport has been designated as a quarantine facility. Up to 600 horses will be temporarily stabled there after arriving from other countries. They will be required to stay in quarantine for at least 42 hours, to be monitored for signs of infectious diseases and for completion of selected laboratory tests. While it may seem strange at first, this site was chosen because it's readily accessible, close to the event, and can provide the needed security. Horses from some regions are subject to different quarantines at different facilities. For example, horses from Asia will be quarantined in Los Angeles, while South American horses are quarantined in Miami and tested for additional diseases such as Venezuelan equine encephalitis and screwworm.
Quarantine is a highly effective measure, if done properly, but it is not foolproof. You can never completely eliminate infectious disease risks because some diseases can have longer incubation periods than the quarantine, and others can be carried by healthy animals. Testing for specific pathogens can help pick up these hidden carriers, but you can't test for everything. You can never declare a horse to be free of all potential causes of disease, because such a horse doesn't exist. All horses carry something that could cause disease in certain situations, but in general these are low risk. The key is focusing efforts on the most common and most serious diseases.
Because quarantine and testing are not 100%, good general infection control practices are also required. The presence of a quarantine must not create a false sense of security and thereby be used as an excuse to relax basic infection control practices. These include things like restricting direct and indirect contact (e.g. sharing buckets) between horses, good hand hygiene by people working with the horses, and close monitoring for signs of disease, among other things. The intense preparations that are involved here show the importance of infectious disease in the equine industry and an excellent awareness of the problem.
