With increased awareness of Lyme disease and the dangers of ticks, the Middlesex London Health Unit is seeing a meteoric rise in the number of tick submissions.
Throughout all of last year, the health unit received roughly 140 ticks from members of the public who have found them on their clothes, pets, or children or who have been bit by a tick. So far this year, they’ve received 288, 17 of which were the potentially dangerous deer ticks.
“The large majority of ticks that we have been finding this year have all been dog ticks,” said Steve Tomé, vector-borne disease field technician.
“Dog ticks are not associated at all with Lyme disease which is very good. We’re more concerned about looking for the black legged ticks, or deer ticks, and we haven’t been finding those in very high numbers, luckily, in our area.”
Tomé added that a mild winter and early start to spring have led to increased activity among both ticks and mosquitoes.
“Ticks and mosquitoes are both able to be a little bit more active early because they don’t have that cold climate to deal with. Mosquitoes are able to lay their eggs in standing water across the community and ticks are actively out looking for blood meals as well.”
The health unit has already begun surveillance and weekly mosquito trapping to monitor for West Nile virus. So far, there has been no positive activity for the virus, though activity usually picks up in July and August.
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