Hidalgo County reports no New World screwworm cases yet

Hidalgo County Office of Emergency Management said Wednesday, July 15, that no New World screwworm cases had been reported in the county, a brief update aimed at ranchers, pet owners and anyone working around livestock in a heavily rural border county.

The notice mattered because New World screwworm is not a routine nuisance. USDA APHIS says the larvae burrow into living tissue, causing severe wounds, animal suffering and significant economic losses. A Congressional Research Service report says USDA eradicated screwworm from the United States in 1966, but recent cases in Mexico have renewed concern about reintroduction.

For Hidalgo County, the lack of a reported case was the key point. The county has 151 farms, 848,867 acres of land in farms, an average farm size of 5,622 acres and a market value of products sold of $23.42 million, according to USDA NASS county profile data. The New Mexico Livestock Board county profile lists Katie Adams as the regional manager contact for Hidalgo County, underscoring how closely animal-health issues can travel through a county with large open ranges and livestock movement.

The July 15 update landed after a run of regional detections that kept the issue live across the borderlands. USDA confirmed the first New Mexico case on June 8, 2026, in a dog from Eunice, in Lea County, and the animal had been taken to a veterinarian in Andrews, Texas. On June 10, the New Mexico Livestock Board issued an emergency response after that first confirmed case, and reporting the next day said officials were urging livestock and pet owners to be alert, but not alarmed. USDA later confirmed two additional screwworm cases in Texas and New Mexico in June.

That backdrop helps explain why a no-cases notice from Hidalgo County was more than routine reassurance. It signaled that local officials were still watching closely enough to tell residents the county had not crossed from monitoring into outbreak response. If a case were detected, the county would be pushed into the same kind of fast-moving coordination seen in Lea County, with state and federal animal-health agencies involved and trade questions following close behind.

That trade pressure was already part of the conversation. A July 16 report said Mexico, Texas and New Mexico authorities were analyzing screwworm’s impact on cattle trade, and one report said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced a plan from Moore Air Base in Hidalgo County, Texas, to stop screwworm from crossing the border. In a county where ranching is tied to daily work and local income, the July 15 update was a clear marker: no reported cases yet, but the border-region risk remained very real.