Exclusive-First human screwworm case in US traced to person in Maryland who traveled from Guatemala, sources say
By Cassandra Garrison and Tom Polansek
Buenos Aires/Chicago (Reuters) -According to four sources familiar with the arrangement, an example of a screw -eating screw -wolf parasite was detected in a person traveling from Guatemala to the United States in Maryland.
Since the treatment in Maryland began to increase a epidemic and move from Central America and Southern Mexico to the north last year, it is the first confirmed situation of the New World screw worm, a parasite that eats cattle and other warm -blooded animals.
Beth Thompson, a state veterinarian of South Dakota, told Reuters on Sunday that he was informed about the case last week by a person who had direct information about the Maryland case.
A second source, which wants to be defined, said that a person in Maryland, a person traveling from Guatemala to the United States, said that a person in a person traveling to the United States from the US Disease Control and Prevention Centers, sent by a manager of the Industrial Group Cattle Alliance on August 20, on August 20.
According to a source, the state veterinarians learned the human case in Maryland during a call with CDC last week. Maryland state government official also confirmed the case.
Thompson said CDC postponed questions to Maryland in a call with state animal health authorities. “We learned in other ways and then we had to go to CDC to say what was going on later,” he said. “They never came.
A CDC spokesman and Maryland Ministry of Health spokesman did not immediately respond to comments. The approved case comes a week after going to Texas to plan to build a sterile fly facility there as part of the efforts to combat pests, the US Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and other government officials.
What is a worm with screws? Wedding worms are parasitic flies that lay eggs in wounds on any hot -blooded animal. After the eggs come out of the egg, hundreds of screws use larvae larvae to bury their sharp mouths to live flesh and finally kill their hosts if left untreated.
The feeding of the maggots is similar to a screw into a screw that gives the pests name into a wood.
Screw worms can be devastating in cattle and wildlife and rarely invad people, but an animal or an invasion may be fatal.
Treatment is laborious and involves hundreds of larvae and disinfection of wounds. However, invasions can typically survive if treated early.
The Beef Alliance manager, whose content was shared with Reuters, said that the positive human case of the new world screw worm in Maryland was approved that day.
A tracking e-mail from the same group said there was no other detail due to patient privacy laws. E -mail, the person was treated and prevention measures were applied, he said.
At the University of Texas A&M, a livestock economist was asked to prepare a report on the effects of the closing of the border on the industry of Mexican cattle for Rollins, according to E -Posts, a precautionary measure to prevent the arrival of the United States to the United States since November.
The CDC had to report the positive new world screw wolf case to both Maryland health authorities and Maryland state vet.
“Awareness is now limited to awareness and state veterinarians, and we hope that a positive case is low and minimized the market effect,” as a awareness is currently limited to industrial representatives and state veterinarians. “
Cattle Alliance Representative did not respond to comments requests.
Impact on Cattle and Cattle Futures
An approved screw case in the United States probably will ring the beef and cattle futures market, which sees record -high prices due to strict materials, and the US cattle herd is in the smallest size of seven years.
The case and the lack of transparency around it may offer a political difficulty for Rollins, which promises to repeat the screw worm over the country. He put traps in USDA and sent civil servants along the border, but he encountered criticism because they did not move faster to maintain fly faster than some cattle manufacturers and market analysts.
Rollins first announced a sterile fly facility plans at the Moore Air Force Base in Edinburg, Texas – a production facility to fight a screw worm operating in the last major epidemic about 50 years ago – in June, the facility said that the facility would take two to three years online. The USDA spokesman did not respond immediately to the request for comments. Mexico also made an effort to limit the spread of pests that could kill farm animals during weeks. The Mexican government said it started to establish a $ 51 million sterile fly production facility in the south of the country in July.
The only operating facility is in Panama city and the flight with a maximum of 100 million sterile screws flies every week. USDA estimated that 500 million flies per week should be released per week to push back to Darien GAP, the rainforests between Panama and Colombia.
According to the USDA, the Wida worms have been going north from Central America since 2023. Endemik in Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic and South America.
In July, Mexico declared a new case in Ixhuatlan in Veracruz, about 370 miles south of the US border in Madero. USDA had previously stopped imports in November and May, and ordered the closure of animal trade over the southern entrance ports.
The US usually imports more than one million cattle from Mexico.
In the 1960s, when researchers began to release a large number of sterilized male screw wolves mating with wild female screw wolves to produce infertile eggs.
USDA estimated that a screw worm epidemic may have approximately $ 1.8 billion of animal deaths, labor costs and drug expenses to the economy in Texas, the largest cattle -producing state of the United States.
(Reporting of Cassandra Garrison in Buenos Aires and Tom Polansek in Chicago. Addressing by Heather Schlitz in Chicago and Jarrett Renshaw in Washington. Editing by Emily Schmall and Diane Craft)
