Tick season is off to a bad start, experts warn

GREENE COUNTY―Emergency room visits for tick bites are at the highest level since 2017, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

As a result, public health officials are urging everyone to protect themselves from tick-borne illnesses like Lyme disease.

“It seems like we are in for a very bad year and these cases are only the tip of the iceberg,” Dr. Nicole Baumgarth, director of the Johns Hopkins Lyme and Tickborne Diseases Research and Education Institute, said Tuesday.

According to the CDC, the Northeast region showed the highest rate of ER visits for tick bites, with 58 per 100,000 visits.

The Midwest ranked second with 40, followed by the Southeast with 21 visits per 100,000. The South Central and Western regions of the county were not as high, with seven and 16, respectively.

Those numbers do not include tick bite visits to primary care doctors or urgent care centers, noted Dr. Thomas Hart, an infectious disease microbiologist at the Lyme and Tickborne Diseases Research and Education Institute.

Emergency rooms are reporting about 25% more patients coming in for tick bites than this time last year, Hart added.

“We are seeing a lot of ticks so far this year and with more ticks comes more tick-borne diseases,” he said.

According to Baumgarth, “common sense methods,” like thoroughly checks for ticks after being outdoors, are the best way to prevent the teeny arachnids from causing big health problems.

Lyme is still the primary disease caused by ticks, with about 476,000 people diagnosed and treated each year in the United States. Over the last three years, New York has averaged more than 17,500 new cases of Lyme disease annually, with nearly 19,000 cases reported in 2024 alone.

Lyme disease typically starts with flu-like symptoms and often, but not always, a characteristic bulls-eye rash. If untreated, Lyme spreads to joints, nervous system, and heart.

In states like Ohio, where just a few years ago there was very little tick activity, cases of Lyme disease are now on the rise, Baumgarth noted.

“Frustratingly, we cannot and have not been able to bend the curve. It seems [there is] an increasing number of tick-borne illnesses every year,” she said. “It is unlikely that this trend is going to change.”

And while Lyme disease is caused by black-legged ticks, commonly known as deer ticks, there is another growing concern, Baumgarth said. The lone star tick is very aggressively moving north, she explained, and it can transmit a molecule that causes alpha-gal syndrome, a food allergy primarily to red meat and, in some cases, dairy products.

The CDC has confirmed established lone star tick populations in the Hudson Valley.

Since 2015, the New York State Department of Health (DOH) has also reported an average of 600 babesiosis infections and an average of 1,300 anaplasmosis infections each year, as well as cases of more rare diseases such as ehrlichiosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and Powassan virus disease. All these diseases can vary in severity, but without treatment, they can cause serious illness and even death, DOH warns.

“This year isn’t over so we cannot definitively say that it is going to be worse than last year. This spring at least has been the worst so far,” said Hart. “But it’s a big year for ticks and a big year for tick-borne diseases.”