US confirms first human case of travel-associated screwworm

STORY: The U.S. has confirmed the first human case in the United States of travel-associated New World screwworm.

It concerned a affected person who returned from journey to El Salvador, according to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Andrew G. Nixon in an e-mail to GWN.

Earlier, GWN had reported that beef industry sources said last week that a case of New World screwworm had been confirmed in a particular person in Maryland who had traveled from Guatemala.

Nixon didn’t deal with the discrepancy on the source of the human case.

The parasite eats cattle and other warm-blooded animals alive…

… and an outbreak has escalated and moved northward from Central America and southern Mexico since late last yr.

South Dakota’s state veterinarian told GWN on Sunday that she was notified of the case within the last week ….

…but complained that officers at the CDC “weren’t forthcoming” at all about the knowledge.

Screwworms are parasitic flies whose females lay eggs in wounds on any warm-blooded animal.

Once the eggs hatch, a whole bunch of screwworm larvae use their sharp mouths to burrow through dwelling flesh, ultimately killing their host if left untreated.

They hardly ever infect people – and treatment is onerous, involving eradicating a whole bunch of larvae and completely disinfecting wounds.

Screwworms had been eradicated from the United States in the Sixties, when researchers started releasing sterilized male screwworm flies that mate with wild feminine screwworms to produce infertile eggs.

The USDA has estimated a screwworm outbreak might price the economic system in Texas, the largest U.S. cattle-producing state, about $1.8 billion in livestock deaths, labor prices and medication bills.

The U.S. sometimes imports over a million cattle from Mexico a yr to fatten in feedlots and course of into beef.

The Maryland case and lack of transparency around it might also current a political problem for U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who pledged repeatedly to keep screwworm out of the nation.

Authorities have set traps and despatched mounted officers along the border.

But it has confronted criticism from some cattle producers and market analysts for not performing sooner and pursuing elevated fly manufacturing.

For now, the only working plant producing sterile screwworms is in Panama City.

New amenities in Texas that Rollins announced in June would need two to three years to come online.