A Dog in Socorro Put El Paso County Inside the Screwworm Zone

For five months the Texas Animal Health Commission has been signing orders named after counties with more cattle than people. The one dated Wednesday carries El Paso in the title.

On Oct. 27 a dog in El Paso County tested positive for New World screwworm, and on Oct. 28 Executive Director Lewis R. Dinges replaced the Hudspeth County order with one that names both counties. Infested Zone 25 becomes Infested Zone 25.A, which the order says "modifies the existing infested zone in Hudspeth County and extends the infested zone into portions of El Paso County."

The mechanics are the same ones ranchers in the Trans-Pecos have been working under since summer. Warm-blooded animals inside 25.A cannot leave without the commission's prior authorization, and getting that authorization means an inspection, a treatment and a movement certificate naming the product used and the animal's official identification. Hides, carcasses and any animal parts capable of hosting the fly need inspection before they cross the line. Unauthorized movement is written into the order as an administrative matter and a criminal one. It took effect immediately and runs until the commission releases the zone.

The county the order names is a first for this outbreak in more ways than one. Every Texas county on the map so far has been rural — the ranching counties around Pecos and Fort Stockton, the river country at Del Rio and Eagle Pass, and Hudspeth, 4,572 square miles with roughly 3,200 residents, which entered the zone on Oct. 24 and was framed at the time as the county pressed against El Paso's western edge. El Paso is what it was pressed against. The commission's restriction notice, checked Thursday, now lists fourteen counties, and El Paso is one of them.

The commission's order cites a single line of trigger: "On October 27, 2026, NWS was detected in a canine in El Paso County."

State Rep. Mary E. González said the dog was in Socorro, in the county's lower valley, and that her office has been in contact with the state agencies handling the response.

"The New World Screwworm affects animals beyond livestock, so be sure to check on your pets and monitor them closely," González said in a statement to KFOX14/CBS4. "It is important that members of our community stay vigilant and go to their veterinarians if they believe their animal may have been impacted."

Reporting routes have multiplied as the outbreak has moved into populated country. KFOX reported that health officials are directing suspected animal cases to the Texas Division of Emergency Management, while the commission's own line remains 800-550-8242 and suspected wildlife cases go to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department at (512) 389-4505. The signs are consistent: wounds that do not heal or that get worse, maggots in a wound or body opening, foul-smelling discharge, and unusual pain or irritation around an injury.

New Mexico added two cases of its own this week, according to KFOX — a sheep on the New Mexico State University campus in Las Cruces and a cow at an off-campus location, both in Doña Ana County, which borders El Paso on the other side of the state line. New Mexico animal health officials said they are expanding surveillance and fly trapping around both locations, including the campus, to find out whether the fly has moved past those two animals.

And the outbreak is no longer a two-state story. Federal officials confirmed Arizona's first case, a dog in Cochise County, after the APHIS National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa, tested diagnostic samples. The Arizona Department of Agriculture said a local veterinarian examined the dog after finding an infested wound on its back consistent with screwworm, and APHIS said it is working with the state on a joint response.

"We have been preparing for this possibility for a long while and are acting swiftly," Arizona State Veterinarian Dr. Ryan Wolker said in the announcement. "Because of the extensive outreach, coordination and surveillance already in place, Arizona producers, veterinarians and pet owners know what to look for and how to report suspected cases."

The numbers published alongside that confirmation do not read like a curve bending. As of Oct. 28 there were 18 active cases in the United States and 70 recorded since the first detection in June, across Texas, New Mexico and now Arizona, according to Drovers, citing federal officials — with three cases recorded in September against 19 so far in October, the heaviest month of the outbreak.

Cochise County is not incidental geography. It sits on the Mexican border and contains the Douglas port of entry, and it hosted a USDA sterile fly facility from 1963 until 1983. The department has committed $25 million to expanding sterile fly dispersal operations and infrastructure at Douglas, and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins toured the Nogales port on Oct. 27, the same week officials said Nogales will reopen to cattle on Nov. 30 if inspection arrangements hold. Her office's accounting of the response: more than 1.6 billion sterile flies released, roughly 100 million a week, and 2,300 drone flights that have surveyed more than 39,000 animals.

For anyone in El Paso County with an animal, the practical list has not changed since June, and it is shorter than the policy fight: look at the animal daily, treat wounds instead of letting them drain, and call before hauling anything with hair on it across the zone boundary. What has changed is where the line sits. The cold-weather argument that has anchored every forecast since September — that pupae in the soil cannot survive a hard freeze — is still an argument, not a result, and late October on the Rio Grande has not delivered the kind of cold it depends on.

The first metro county on this map got there because of a dog. That is worth remembering the next time someone reads "livestock disease" and stops reading.