Officials just spoke out to warn the public that some elk on a ranch in Oklahoma have tested positive for the so-called “zombie” deer disease weeks after an animal died of it.

The Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food & Forestry (ODAFF) and the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC) stated that a 2-year-old bull elk was found to be carrying the illness known as Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). The elk was reportedly living at a breeding facility in Lincoln County that has since been completely quarantined.

Doctors describe this disease as “a fatal neurological disease that affects the brains of elk, deer and other cervid species.” Symptoms of CWD include drooling, stumbling, aggression, listlessness and insatiable thirst, and there is neither a vaccine nor a cure for it at this time.

Not only can the disease spread directly through animal-to-animal contact, it can also be transmitted indirectly through contaminated soil, drinking water or food. Making matters worse, officials say that there is a risk that humans could get this disease through contaminated meat.

“Animal studies suggest CWD poses a risk to some types of non-human primates, like monkeys, that eat meat from CWD-infected animals or come in contact with brain or body fluids from infected deer or elk. These studies raise concerns that there may also be a risk to people. Since 1997, the World Health Organization has recommended that it is important to keep the agents of all known prion diseases from entering the human food chain,” said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

This is the second case of CWD being found in elk in Oklahoma, with officials saying that the first case reported was in 1998.