Equine herpesvirus quarantine leads to 11 scratches in four Tuesday stakes

Eleven horses in the four $100,000 stakes scheduled for Tuesday at Parx racetrack in Philadelphia have scratched, with the vast majority of those scratches coming from trainers based outside Pennsylvania who passed on shipping to the track in the wake of a quarantine of two barns there.

The scratches include four horses each in the Society Hill Stakes and the City of Brotherly Love Stakes, reducing the Society Hill to seven entrants and the City of Brotherly Love to four entrants. The Main Line Stakes had one scratch, and the Rittenhouse Square Stakes had two scratches.

Parx officials acknowledged on Monday that they had placed a quarantine on two barns at the track after a horse was euthanized on Sunday while suffering from neurological problems, a symptom of equine herpesvirus, a highly contagious disease.

David Osojnak, the track’s racing secretary, said on Tuesday that the situation at the track has not changed since Monday. All ship-ins to the track will be required to stay at Parx until the quarantine on the two barns is lifted.

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Osojnak said that the euthanized horse tested positive for the respiratory form of the virus, but that initial tests on the blood were negative. The track is still awaiting other tests on the horse, he said.

“Right now it’s a wait-and-see situation,” Osojnak said. “If another horse spikes a fever or shows symptoms, we'll have to deal with that. Obviously it’s an evolving situation.”

Parx ran three $100,000 stakes races on Monday, and the track is also holding a live Wednesday card this week. The track’s jackpot-style Philly Pick 5 has a $474,643 carryover going into today’s card, and the bet faces a mandatory payout on Wednesday.