{"id":343966,"date":"2026-06-20T11:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T11:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/343966\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T11:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T11:05:10","slug":"public-health-workers-issue-grim-warning-about-flesh-eating-parasite-after-texas-town-is-quarantined","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/343966\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Health Workers Issue Grim Warning About Flesh-Eating Parasite After Texas Town Is Quarantined"},"content":{"rendered":"

A deadly flesh-eating parasite that creates festering sores by gruesomely burrowing into its prey\u2019s skin has been detected in the U.S. for the first time in 60 years and public health workers are warning of a potential outbreak!<\/p>\n

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As Globe went to press, officials were enforcing a 12-mile quarantine zone around tiny La Pryor, Texas, a rural town of around 1,200 people some 30 miles from the Mexican border, where the return of the New World (NW) screwworm had been registered for the first time since it was eradicated from America in 1966, as reported by NBC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The parasites get their name from their hellish ability to dig headfirst into a victim\u2019s flesh in the same way a screw does wood. No known medicine can cure an infestation \u2014 and the only way to get rid of the critters is by having a doctor excruciatingly search for them surgically.<\/p>\n

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>, such horrific infestations occur when an NW screwworm fly lays its eggs \u2014 hundreds at a time \u2014 in the open wounds or, seemingly worse, eyes, nose or ears of humans or animals.<\/p>\n

When the eggs hatch, the resulting larvae consume the surrounding tissue, digging deeper and deeper as time passes. If the infestation is not treated, the host will eventually die, according to the CDC.<\/p>\n

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The La Pryor, Texas, infestation was discovered in a three-week-old bovine calf, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said, per NBC. Another case was found in February in a horse that had come to the U.S. from Argentina. The last human case in America dates to last year, when a woman returning from El Salvador tested positive.<\/p>\n

Rollins said federal officials were working to eradicate the NW screwworm flies by releasing sterile males into the wild near the Mexican border. Since females only typically mate once, those female flies mating with the sterile male ones will not produce offspring, the CDC said.<\/p>\n

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Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller branded the Department of Agriculture\u2019s response to the infestation as \u201cslow, bureaucratic and incomplete\u201d and said it would take \u201cyears to fully implement,\u201d according to the Texas Department of Agriculture<\/a> website.<\/p>\n

In fact, with multiple NW screwworm cases now detected in Mexico as close as 25 miles from the U.S. border, Miller appealed directly to President Donald Trump<\/a> to \u201cthrow every available federal resource at this threat before it becomes a full-blown agricultural disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story Public Health Workers Issue Grim Warning About Flesh-Eating Parasite After Texas Town Is Quarantined<\/a> first appeared on Globe<\/a>. Follow Globe on Yahoo<\/a> so you don\u2019t miss what\u2019s coming next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A deadly flesh-eating parasite that creates festering sores by gruesomely burrowing into its prey\u2019s skin has been detected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":343967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5704,21087,60365,115677,122741,60339,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-343966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-brooke-rollins","tag-getty-images","tag-infestation","tag-la-pryor","tag-public-health-workers","tag-screwworm-fly","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=343966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/343967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=343966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=343966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=343966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}