Lolo Payan, center, looks back to follow the play during a May 2010 game at the Empire Polo Club in Indio. The club canceled polo practices this week as its horses are quarantined following a positive test for the equine herpes virus. / Desert Sun file photo
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INDIO — Polo games at both the Empire Polo Club and the neighboring Eldorado Polo Club have been canceled or postponed amid a 21-day quarantine of the horses.
The state-imposed quarantine at Empire comes after one horse tested positive for the equine herpes virus and had to be euthanized Monday.
While no cases were confirmed at Eldorado, officials there are abiding by the same quarantine in order to minimize the risk to their horses. All the canceled matches will be rescheduled.
“We treat the health and safety of our horses with extraordinary concern,” Eldorado general manager Jan Hart said in a statement. "Though no cases of EHV-1 have occurred at Eldorado, we want to do all we can to stop the spread of this contagious illness.”
On the Empire Polo Club website, local officials said they are working with the California Animal Health officials to discuss the next steps.
The inaugural Empire Polo & Wine Festival set for noon Sunday, with more than a dozen Temecula wineries, is still a go, but without the accompanying polo match, according to the Facebook page.
An Empire spokesman was not immediately available for comment this morning.
Only the Desert Equine Hospital on 52nd Avenue is excluded from the quarantined area, since those horses were not exposed to the virus.
"This decision was made after careful review of the overall stabling layout and the potential for exposure to horses that were in the stabling area of the infected horse and their subsequent contact with many horses throughout the complex," officials said in a statement online late Wednesday.
The arena is only open to the horses, and “essential personnel” who need to tend to them, polo field officials have said.
Any horse that had close contact with the euthanized horse within the past 14 days may have been exposed, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
The EHV-1 infection, or equine herpes virus, may cause respiratory and neurological diseases and lead to the abortion of fetuses, according to the state Department of Food and Agriculture.
The recommended isolation period for a horse that tests positive is 21 days.
Experts have not linked the local incident to the 15 confirmed cases that have occurred in Orange County since Jan. 11.
