Mexico City.- Mexico registered an increase of 118 accumulated cases of screwworm in livestock (GBG) between the first and second epidemiological weeks of 2026, going from 13,217 to 13,335 records, according to the monitoring dashboards published by the National Service of Health, Food Safety and Agri-Food Quality (Senasica) and the Ministry of Agriculture.
Furthermore, the figures specify that the weekly increase was concentrated in the south-southeast of the country, where more reports have historically accumulated. In absolute terms, the increase was observed in the states of Veracruz, with 32 more cases (from 1,931 to 1,963), Chiapas with 29 (from 5,379 to 5,408) and Oaxaca with 23 (from 2,032 to 2,055).These entities alone account for 84 of the 118 new cases confirmed in the weekly report.
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In contrast, entities such as Guerrero (109), Nuevo León (three), Querétaro (three), Morelos (two) and Jalisco (one) remained unchanged in the accumulated total. According to the latest report from the epidemiological week of 2026, Chiapas remains the state with the most accumulated cases (5,408), followed by Oaxaca (2,055), Veracruz (1,963), Yucatan (1,537) and Tabasco (1,087), so these five entities concentrate the majority of the records and mark the territorial pattern of the outbreak, with a main presence in the southeast and the Gulf corridor. Despite this rebound, the Secretariat of Agriculture and Senasica reported this Thursday that there are currently 492 active cases of GBG, which represents a 57% reduction compared to the peak of 1,145 cases reported on December 10, 2025. In a statement, the dependencies highlighted that almost all of the cases are located in nine states of the country. “While the plague has appeared in 17 entities, timely attention and strict protocols have ensured that 95.7%—of the total of 492 active cases as of January 7—are located in nine states: Veracruz, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Campeche, Guerrero, and Puebla,” the document detailed. And he specified that the states of Jalisco, Morelos, Nuevo León and Querétaro are already free of the plague due to the timely attention to the emergency. The Senasica reiterated the implementation of an emergency plan for entities such as Tamaulipas, which in a week accumulated three cases of GBG, as well as in northern Veracruz, which, it pointed out, “includes intensive surveillance, direct attention in the field and the focused release of sterile flies as a suppression strategy.” On December 3rd, the Mexican Government announced that it expanded the measures planned to contain the screwworm plague, which primarily affects cattle, but also domestic and wild species, and humans. Cattle imports from Mexico play an important role in the U.S., averaging over one million head annually for decades, representing approximately 60% of live cattle imports and about 3% of the national herd.
