New World screwworm has been detected in an elk in Texas, marking the first confirmed case of the flesh-eating parasite in U.S. wildlife during the current outbreak. Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed New World screwworm, or NWS, in an elk in Pecos County, Texas, on October 21. The elk, which was confirmed female by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), was shot by a hunter on a game ranch.
The animal was then reported to authorities. A sample was collected from it and identified as New World screwworm at the USDA Agricultural Research Service's Knipling-Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory in Kerrville.
The discovery comes after a series of cases have risen in domestic animals in the U.S. this year. The first animal case in the current outbreak was confirmed in a three-week-old calf in Zavala County, Texas, on June 3 by the USDA. The USDA has a live dashboard recording confirmed U.S. detections, including individual animal cases by state, county, species, confirmation date, and status, as well as traps where at least one wild New World screwworm fly has been detected.
Confirmed U.S. cases are currently in just two states: Texas and New Mexico. The outbreak began in Texas in June and has subsequently travelled rapidly across a number of counties. Early Texas cases included animals in Zavala, La Salle, Gillespie, Edwards, Tom Green and Sutton counties.
Later official orders published by the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) reported detections including a goat in Terrell County on June 22, a sheep in Pecos County on July 14, a type of cattle in Starr County on July 18, another bovine in Brewster County on July 9, and also a dog there on October 2, and, more recently, another cattle case was detected in Pecos County on October 10. New Mexico's official New World screwworm website currently reports three confirmed cases. Two, confirmed on October 16, are in Grant County, were found in a calf and a horse, while the other is in Otero, confirmed on October 21, and involves a cow.
The Texas situation is wider than the locations of individual cases. The TAHC currently has NWS-related animal movement restrictions in place across parts of 12 Texas counties: Brewster, Crockett, Edwards, Jeff Davis, Pecos, Presidio, Schleicher, Starr, Sutton, Terrell, Val Verde and Zapata. New World screwworm (NWS), Cochliomyia hominivorax, is a parasitic fly that lays its eggs on the living tissue of warm-blooded animals, usually in open wounds, genitalia, or moist body openings like nostrils, eyes, or mouths.
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