PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) -- A statewide task force is taking aim at a deadly disease affecting Pennsylvania’s deer population. CWD, or chronic wasting disease, is a neurological disease that afflicts only deer.
"In Pennsylvania, it was first found in 2012 in a captive deer," said Andrea Korman, a Pennsylvania Game Commission biologist. "Just a few months after that, we found it in the wild herd. There is no cure. There is no vaccine. The disease is always fatal."
Korman said it has generally been found in deer inhabiting the north-central and northwestern parts of the state. The latest data shows nearly 500 deer have contracted the disease.
She said the CWD task force includes the state's departments of health, agriculture, environmental protection and conservation and natural resources, and the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
This month the group released a report outlining efforts to stop the spread of the disease, including monitoring wild and captive deer herds and testing of deer killed by hunters and on roads.
She said so far, chronic wasting disease hasn’t been detected in the five-county Philadelphia region.
"I know it’s not there yet, but it’s still important to just know what it is and understand why it’s important," Korman said. "And a lot of people might live in the Philadelphia area but might hunt in an area that is infected."
She advised hunters from southeastern Pennsylvania who head to regions of the state where the disease has been detected to familiarize themselves with updated hunting regulations.
Korman said there’s not much data showing any human connection to the disease.
However, she sayd, any deer killed in those areas where the disease has been found need to be tested at a lab for CWD before being processed for consumption.
Korman said the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine at the New Bolton Center in Kennett Square in Chester County and a Penn Vet lab in Harrisburg have ramped up operations to help the state test for the disease and track it.
"Between all of our processor samples and hunter samples and we do road-kill samples we do use both of these labs because we do have such a heavy sample load," she said.