Canadian deers attacked by Chronic Wasting Disease dubbed as Zombie virus

CHENNAI: According to VICE World News, a weird, debilitating, and highly infectious virus is wreaking havoc on Canada's deer herds.

At few places in Canada, there has been an outbreak of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), which is a concerning occurrence and is said to be sweeping among deers in the prairies and parklands.

Known as the chronic wasting disease, the fatal progressive neurodegenerative illness was first discovered in Canada in 1996 on an elk farm and it is believed to affect animals such as deer, caribou, moose, and elks in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and Quebec.

Like mad cow disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, it is caused by prions – misshapen proteins that can persist in the environment for up to a decade, able to transfer their shape to healthy proteins.

CWD was discovered in a sample given as part of the hunter monitoring program, in which hunters send samples of captured animals to be tested for the illness and its spread can happen through an animal with a chronic wasting disease that can spread prions to other animals through direct or indirect contact with bodily fluids such as feces, saliva, blood, or urine.

The infected animals after getting affected may soon become ill, skinny and feeble.

According to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, chronic wasting illness takes over a deer's neuro system and is said to be always deadly. They also might lose their fear of people and other predators, and display symptoms like drooling, stumbling, poor coordination, sadness, behavioural abnormalities, and paralysis. Due to this, some observers have dubbed it a Zombie disease.

The illness has not yet been found to spread to people, but it is a danger to deer and elk populations.