A human case of New World screwworm was identified in a Maryland resident who had recently returned from El Salvador and has been treated. Human risk is low because infected people typically seek medical care and human carriage of larvae rarely triggers outbreaks. The primary threat is to livestock, pets, and other animals because larvae infest open wounds and consume living flesh, causing extreme pain and potential death if untreated. Females of Cochliomyia hominivorax can lay up to 300 larvae in wounds; larvae pupate in soil after three to seven days before emerging as flies. The parasite has been advancing northward from Central America via infected animals and has been designated by HHS leadership as a significant potential public health emergency that could threaten national security and the U.S. meat industry.
Just two months after reports warily noted that new world screwworms, flesh-eating parasites that are notorious for killing livestock, pets and other animals, hadn't made it back into the U.S. yet, they havein the form of the country's first human infection from the current outbreak in Central America. Screwworm larvae hitched a ride inside a person who had recently been to El Salvador, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The patient, a resident of Maryland, has been treated, and the threat to other people is low. A human coming back with [larvae] is generally not going to lead to an outbreak because those humans are going to go get treated, says veterinary entomologist Sonja L. Swiger of Texas A&M University. These larvae are horrible. They eat your body, literally. The real danger is to livestock.
The new world screwworm has been spreading steadily northward from Central America, mainly by traveling in infected animals, and poses a major threat to the U.S. meat industry. Last week Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., determined that the advancing parasite signaled a significant potential for a public health emergency that could threaten national security, according to an HHS notice.
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