Moments ago, we informed the community that we have taken the difficult but very necessary decision to extend the cancellation of all international events in mainland Europe for an additional two weeks, up until 11 April 2021, due to the ongoing outbreak of the neurological form of Equine Herpes Virus (EHV-1).
The decision, which is based on scientific evidence from world leading epidemiologist Dr Richard Newton and a full risk assessment by the FEI Veterinary Department, will mean the cancellation of your Event(s) in the FEI Calendar.
The move, which aims to minimise the further spread of the very aggressive strain of the virus, was unanimously approved at an emergency FEI Executive Board meeting today. The extended lockdown applies to all FEI disciplines.
Similarly to the OCs impacted by the initial shutdown from 1-28 March, we would like to offer you the opportunity to reschedule your event to later in the year. We will organise Calendar Task Force meetings to review the Calendar once we have received the requests from all the affected organisers, and will give priority to those organisers who also had to cancel their events in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Please contact calendar@fei.org by 25 March 2021 if you would like to reschedule your Event so that we can plan accordingly.
As you can imagine, this is not a decision we have taken lightly, but our priority has to be the safety of the horse population. We have also recommended all our National Federations in mainland Europe cancel all national events so that we can contain this aggressive strain of EHV-1 and be ready for a safe return to competition as of 12 April.
You will find more on this particular announcement in the Updates of our dedicated EHV-1 Hub. We also have a dedicated Q&A section, and a Timeline retracing the daily developments in this outbreak.