Myxomatosis
Vaccinating your rabbits is the most important measure you can take to protect them. They can be injected from five weeks old and they’ll need boosters every year with the new triple combination vaccine.

It doesn’t guarantee absolute protection from Myxomatosis. But the disease will be milder in vaccinated rabbits, appearing as a single skin lesion, or a short, fairly minor illness. If you think your rabbit has Myxomatosis take it to a rabbit friendly vet who’ll report the infection to the vaccine manufacturers. Vaccinated rabbits with Myxomatosis usually survive, unfortunately unvaccinated rabbits tend not to.
 

Rabbit Viral Haemorrhagic Disease (RVHD)

You’ll need to protect your rabbits against two strains of RVHD, known as RVHD1 and RVHD2.

Vaccination is very effective. Your rabbits can be injected from five weeks old. They’ll need a booster with the triple combination vaccine every 12 months. If your rabbit has never had a stand alone RVHD2 vaccine then it should be given as a one-off the first time you vaccinate. See above for more information.

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It’s important your rabbits live a happy, healthy life. So vaccinate them every year against Myxomatosis and two strains of Rabbit Viral Haemorrhagic Disease (RVHD 1 and RVHD 2). Do this and you’re doing your bit to keep your rabbits at their best.

Here at the RWA&F, we’ve held meetings with the vaccine manufacturers and updated our advice. Detailed information, including drug names, which we are only legally allowed to give to veterinary professionals, is published in the Vets section. If your vet has any queries, please ask them to check out the vet-only pages.

In light of the new ‘highly virulent strain’ of RVHD2, we have updated our vaccination advice, and all rabbits now need two vaccinations a year:

1. ‘Triple’ vaccine to cover Myxi, RVHD1 and RVHD2

2. New vaccine to cover RVHD2 highly virulent strain

These vaccines can be given 2 weeks or more apart.

Your vet should know about the vaccination options. If they would like further information, please let them know that they can visit our website. Unless there are any currently unforeseen issues they should be able to order the new vaccine from their wholesaler from 9th December 2024. Initially, only the multi-dose vials are available in December, and the individual doses are from January 2025. Speak to your vet; they may offer vaccination sessions so that the multi-dose vials can be shared between rabbit owners so that you don’t have to cover the cost of the whole vial. However, it is vitally important to maintain separation and biosecurity of rabbits in this situation. Or speak to local rabbit-owning friends and see if you can all arrange appointments on the same day. The vial needs to be used within 10 hours of being opened.

We are aware that there is, sadly, yet another strain of Rabbit Viral Haemorrhagic disease out there: “virulent” or “highly virulent” RVHD2.

It’s been detected in Hungary, France, Northern Italy and the Netherlands, where it makes up approximately 50% of the cases seen (the other 50% being “classical” RVHD2). As yet, we can’t be sure of its presence in the UK, as no work has been done to look for it. We are in the process of finding out if it is possible to do any surveillance for it, but we know from past experience with previous strains, that it is only a matter of time before it gets here, if it’s not here already.

The good news is that there is a new vaccine which covers both it and the “classical” RVHD2 strain, but not RVHD1, nor myxomatosis. The bad news is that we don’t expect this to be available in the UK until early next year. Because of the restriction placed on us by the Veterinary Medicine Directorate we are not able to provide the names of any vaccinations to rabbit guardians and caregivers, only to clinicians such as vets. However, we are communicating this to them also so you should contact your vet for advice.

We hope to be able to give more news nearer the time of its release, including suggested vaccine regimes for vets and for owners. Until then, please do not stop vaccinating with the currently available vaccine, as this offers the fullest possible protection available right now, and please continue to take sensible precautions to avoid bringing it into your rabbit’s environment (eg. by changing outdoor footwear at the door, and being careful to forage in places with, ideally, no wild rabbits present).

If you are adding any new rabbits to your household (or if you run a rescue), then we advise quarantining any new additions for two weeks.
 

17/12/2024 Highly virulent strain of RVHD2 and vaccination update: as of 17th December 2024

We issued the update below recently, since then we are told that the multi dose vials have all been delivered to the vet practices that had them on order and there is now no stock available. The next stock will be the single dose vials and they will be available at some point in January, so please do discuss this with your vet so that they can get it on order.

As you are probably aware, there is a new variant of Rabbit Viral Haemorrhagic Disease 2 (RVHD2) which is going to the UK very soon, and may well already be here. It is known as “highly virulent” RVHD2.

No vaccines currently available in the UK have been shown to offer full protection against this strain. A vaccine covering this "highly virulent" strain will be available to your vet from early December 2024 but until then, all we can advise is keeping your rabbit’s current vaccines up to date and carrying out strict biosecurity measures.

If your rabbits are not vaccinated, or their vaccines are overdue (ie they last had them over a year ago), then please get them vaccinated as soon as possible. This will offer them the absolute best protection possible against RVHD2 at this stage, and we are still seeing myxomatosis, even in November, due to the warm wet conditions so far.

If your rabbits’ ‘triple vaccines’ fall due soon, don’t delay or change that. It’s not worth waiting until your veterinary practice gets the new vaccine in. Different practices will have different vaccine protocols, and regimes should be tailored to the situation each individual rabbit is in. Discuss this with your vet. All standard rabbit vaccine protocols will still involve giving the currently available multi-disease vaccine in any case. But, to be clear, we are now recommending that all rabbits have two vaccines a year

1 – ‘Triple’ vaccine to cover Myxi, RVHD1 and RVHD2

2 – New vaccine to cover RVHD2 highly virulent strain

These vaccines can be given 2 weeks or more apart. 

Your vet should know about the vaccination options. If they would like further information, please let them know that they can visit our website. Unless there are any currently unforeseen issues they should be able to order the new vaccine from their wholesaler from 9th December 2024. Initially only the multi dose vials are available in December and the individual doses from January 2025. Speak to your vet, they may offer vaccination sessions so that the multi dose vials can be shared between rabbit owners, so that you don’t have to cover the cost of the whole vial. However, it is vitally important to maintain separation and biosecurity of rabbits in this situation. Or speak to local rabbit owning friends and see if you can all arrange appointments within the same day. The vial needs to be used within 10 hours of being opened.

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