Deer farms in another two far-flung spots at nearly opposite ends of Pennsylvania have joined the state's roster spots quarantined after chronic wasting disease has been found in a deer associated with them, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
The department on late Tuesday announced that a 5-year-old deer that died on a farm near Reynoldsville, about five miles west of DuBois, in Jefferson County has tested positive for CWD.
The department has placed that farm, and a deer farm at Walnuport, Northampton County, where the deer was born, under quarantine.
Deer legally may not be moved on or off the properties, and the ongoing investigation may lead to additional farms being quarantined.
The always fatal CWD attacks the brains of infected antlered animals such as deer, elk and moose, producing small lesions that eventually result in death.
Symptoms include weight loss, excessive salivation, increased drinking and urination, and abnormal behavior like stumbling, trembling and depression. Infected deer and elk may also allow unusually close approach by humans or natural predators.
There is no known treatment or vaccine.
Animals can get the disease through direct contact with saliva, feces and urine from an infected animal, and the soil where they lived. Researchers have yet to discover an upper limit on how long the disease-causing prions can live in the soil.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there is no evidence that humans or livestock can get the disease., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Pennsylvania's first CWD cases were discovered Oct. 10, 2012, in two deer on a deer farm at New Oxford, Adams County.
During its investigation the department quarantined 27 farms in 16 counties associated with the positive samples. Since then, five farms remain quarantined.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission created the state's first chronic wasting disease management area around that farm. It remains in effect for parts of Adams and York counties,
The commission created a second DMA after two 2012 hunter-killed deer in Bedford and Blair counties tested positive for CWD.
They were the first hunter-killed deer to test positive for the disease, despite the commission's testing of more than 43,000 free-ranging deer and elk since 1998.
CWD was first discovered in Colorado captive mule deer in 1967, and has since been detected in 21 other states and two Canadian provinces, including Pennsylvania's neighbors New York, West Virginia and Maryland.
The first confirmed case of CWD in Maryland was reported in February 2011, in Allegany County, near Pennsylvania's southern state line.
The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture coordinates a mandatory surveillance program for more than 23,000 captive deer on 1,100 breeding farms, hobby farms and shooting preserves across the state. Three captive deer have tested positive since 2012.