Emergency room visits for tick bites are higher than usual across the country, including in Wisconsin.
Health officials say warmer spring weather is prompting ticks to show up earlier than in previous years. Which means people are more likely to run into ticks as they head outdoors.
Xia Lee is the Wisconsin Department of Health Services’ Public Health Entomologist.
He spoke with Lake Effect’s Xcaret Nuñez to share the latest on tick bite cases and how to stay safe this tick season.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are tick-by cases looking like right now across Wisconsin?
Tick bite cases in Wisconsin, or at least from our data that we have in terms of emergency room visits that are related to tick bites, we are seeing an increased number of visits compared to previous years. We’ve seen about 66 visits or so around this time. If you compare that to last year, we're seeing about 40 or so visits. So you can see that the numbers are up a little bit. A couple of weeks ago, we had about 44 visits to the [ER]. Then you compare that to last year, which was about 24 visits, so you can see where the numbers were double this year compared to last year. We think a lot of that has to do with the increase in the tick populations that are appearing right now, so we're seeing an earlier start in the tick season. It’s started about two weeks earlier than it did last year, and so it's not necessarily an increase in the number of ticks that we're seeing compared to previous years, but just an earlier appearance of those ticks.
What is making ticks come out even earlier? What type of conditions do they thrive in?
When the weather gets warm in the springtime, that's usually when we see the adult ticks start to become active, so in this case, the adult deer ticks. In Wisconsin, we generally say that when the temperatures get above 40 degrees in spring, and there's no snow cover, then the deer ticks start to become active and they start to look for someone to bite or something to feed on. We see something similar with wood ticks as well. So I think this year we had a warmer spring, and so the ticks have been activated just a little bit earlier than in previous years.
To clarify: Just because you get bitten by a tick doesn't mean you get infected with Lyme disease. But how common is this disease in Wisconsin, and what's the likelihood of transmission?
That's a very good question. In Wisconsin, we unfortunately have a number of pathogens or diseases that can be transmitted by the deer tick, and the transmission time is very different for each of them. But in general, when we think about the pathogen that causes Lyme disease, that pathogen can be transmitted between 24 and 36 hours after attachment. In Wisconsin, if you remove the tick within 24 hours, we have guidelines that recommend you just wait and see if you develop any symptoms. But if the tick has been attached to you for more than 24 hours, we recommend that you remove that deer tick and go in for prophylactic treatment.
In terms of the percentage of the ticks that are infected with the pathogen that causes Lyme disease. In Wisconsin, we calculate that on average, 20% of the juvenile life stage, and those are the ticks that are active during the summer months, so June and July, that 20% percent of that life stage are infected with the pathogens that can cause Lyme Disease. With the adult ticks, since they've had two opportunities to feed and two opportunities to pick up a pathogen. Generally, when we do the math on that life stage, we see that about 40 to 50% of that life stage is infected with the pathogen that causes Lyme disease.
But with all that being said, I think it's important to know that here in Wisconsin, because there is such a high prevalence of the pathogen — 20 to 50% of ticks are infected with the pathogen that can cause Lyme Disease — we treat every tick bite as if the tick is infected without needing to actually test those ticks for that pathogen, based on those recommendations.
Can you share some advice on how people can prevent tick bites?
I think about tick bite prevention in three different stages — what you can do before you head outside, what you can do while you're outside, and what you can do after you come back from being outdoors.
Before you go outside, check the location where you're going. There are deer ticks in every county in Wisconsin, but if you're traveling outside Wisconsin, be aware of states where you may come into contact with the lone star tick. Another thing to consider before you head out is treating your clothing with a product that contains permethrin — that's an insecticide that's lethal to ticks and mosquitoes, but it's fairly safe for humans. If you treat your clothing with that and forget to apply bug spray, when the ticks grab onto your clothing, they'll get that lethal dose of permethrin. It'll kill them before they can attach to you, or if they do attach to you, it will kill them before they can transmit any pathogens to you.
Then, while you're hiking on a trail and you get to a bench, just do a quick tick check. Some of these ticks, like the wood ticks and the lone star ticks, are active hunters, meaning that they will seek you and hunt you down while you're standing there in the woods. And while you hike through the woods, other ticks like deer ticks tend to be ambush hunters, meaning they like to wait for you to brush up against them on vegetation. So just do your tick checks whenever you stop, and that's a good opportunity to remove any ticks before they can attach to you. And of course, while you're out there, use bug spray and target areas where ticks are gonna grab onto you. A lot of the adult ticks grab onto us around our thigh region, shin region, and waist region.
Lastly, when you're done being outdoors and you come back inside, I recommend doing another thorough tick check to make sure that you don't carry any of those passengers into your home. Then take off your clothes, throw them into the dryer, and run it on high for about 20 minutes. That high heat will kill any ticks that are left on your clothing. Then, take a shower — that's also an opportunity to do another thorough tick check on yourself to make sure that you don't have any ticks attached to you. So those are my recommendations to prevent tick bites.
You can report tick sightings through The Tick App or submit a photo of the tick to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
