On Nov. 12, 2026, The U.S. Department of Agriculture is reporting 128 confirmed cases of New World Screwworm. The confirmed cases are in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Deputy Executive Director and Assistant State Veterinarian for the Texas Animal Health Commission, T.R. Lansford, said confirmed cases have increased over the past few weeks.

With traps deployed across the Texas-Mexico Border, it has been an effective surveillance method in terms of looking for the wild fly in the environment. However, it hasn’t been as effective for animal surveillance.

“Anytime we find a screw worm infestation is we put in an infested zone or an area where we control movement of animals,” explained Lansford. “And part of that includes having to do inspections, treatments, and issuing movement permits for animals to move out of those areas.”

Lansford shared that it is an important part of the process because it mitigates th risk of moving infested animals out of that area and gives officials many eyes on the animals. This helps determine the size of the screwworm wild population.

“It’s an all hands on deck situation and is going to require the continued efforts on everybody to continue to fight this,” explained Lansford. “Number two, it’s important to remain vigilant and be looking at our animals and reporting cases as soon as you think there’s a suspicion so that we can get sterile flies in the environment to suppress that wild population if there is one there.” According to Lansford, the third thing people should know is that it is not a food safety issue.