Mexico’s active screwworm cases down 57 per cent since mid-December, ministry says

Mexico Metropolis | Reuters — Mexico’s energetic circumstances of New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite that has saved the U.S.-Mexico border closed to Mexican livestock, have fallen 57 per cent since mid-December, the nation’s agriculture ministry mentioned on Thursday.

• Energetic circumstances dropped to 492 as of January 7, from 1,145 registered on December 10, the ministry mentioned, overwhelmingly concentrated in a handful of states.
• Development for a factory to breed sterile flies in Chiapas state is 48 per cent full and is on monitor to start out working within the first half of this yr, the ministry mentioned, when it is going to produce some 200 million flies per week.
• The flies might be launched into the wild, so when sterile males mate with wild females, no offspring are produced and the inhabitants collapses over time.
• The screwworm outbreak, which has moved northward by way of Central America and deep into Mexico, has strained relations with the US, Mexico’s greatest buying and selling associate.
• The U.S. has saved its border mostly closed to Mexican cattle imports since Might.

— Reporting by Raul Cortes