Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture visited Edinburg on Monday to get an update on a New World Screwworm production facility under construction at Moore Air Base.

Officials said the facility is seven months ahead of schedule and on track to open in April 2027.

The production facility is separate from fly dispersal operations, which are already underway.

"We will reach the initial operating capacity of 100 million sterile flies per week," U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins said. "We'll reach that capacity by the end of next year or early the next."

Rollins also said the facility has a new opening date that is months ahead of schedule.

"We are way ahead of schedule on the actual fly facility," Rollins said. "We have a brand new opening date, which is months ahead of schedule, years ahead of where any other administration would likely be, but months ahead of where even we had hoped to be."

Federal officials are also using drones to monitor cattle for infections, according to Channel 5 News. 

So far, there has been only one confirmed New World Screwworm infection in the Rio Grande Valley. It was caught last month in a calf in Starr County.