United States: Health Officials and experts who have already confirmed a case of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) which is actually a deadly disease that mainly affects deer, at a facility in upstate New York. This is the very first time CWD has been discovered or monitored in the state in nearly almost after two decades. The last confirmed case was in the year 2005, when the disease was spotted in both wild and captive deer in Oneida County.
Due to such behaviours, the infected deer with CWD have been known informally as ‘zombie deer.’
The NYSDEC reported the latest CWD incident in the area between St. Lawrence, Jefferson, Lewis, Oneida and Herkimer Counties was confirmed in October.
Why do we have deer hunting season in the fall.
As reported by the Fox Weather, they hereby also pointed out that the find was made at a time the New York State Departments of Agriculture and Markets were undertaking some checks. The USDA’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories also confirmed it.
However, both state and federal agencies are still working to investigate this case of CWD in New York to avoid the further spread of the disease within the state. Nearly impossible to eliminate within deer populations as well as elk and moose populations.
This yearling handler, the NYSDEC stated, cannot be infected with CWD. However, there is a warning from people not to take any meat from a diseased animal that is affected with the disease.
CWD is always fatal, cannot be treated or vaccinated against and very hard to diagnose. “CWD infect animals shed prions at various stages of disease and CWD-affected animals can shed prions preclinically,” said Dr. Brandon Munk, the Cal-fish veterinarian and state CWD program coordinator. “These prions can remain stable for years in the environment so once a disease breaks out, it is almost impossible to prevent it from spreading.”
Many questions remain unanswered about CWD and there are few large-scale projects to decipher the pathology of the disease as it progresses. Understandably, one of the major worries is that CWD prions will slip across the species divide and infect humans like the AIDS virus bounded from chimpanzees to humans. In humans the prions could lead to a variant form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a highly fatal disease that is characterized by a progressive neurodegenerative disorder.