Tick bites and Lyme disease cases are increasing sharply, with emergency-room tick-bite visits in the Northeast rising from 167 to 229 per 100,000 ER visits year over year. Official reports recorded more than 89,000 Lyme disease cases in 2023, while insurance-claim analyses estimate about 476,000 people seek treatment annually. Black-legged tick habitat is expanding and the transmission season is lengthening, beginning earlier in spring and stretching into late fall. Early antibiotic treatment for symptoms such as a target-like rash, fever, headache, and extreme fatigue is highly effective; untreated infections can cause chronic joint, heart, and nervous-system problems.
The list of summertime scourges grows longer each year: wildfires, heat waves, floods. And we can now add to that a veritable infestation of biting, Lyme-disease-carrying ticks. Emergency room visits for tick bites in the Northeast are at their highest levels in at least five years. This June, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 229 tick bites per every 100,000 visits to ERs around the Northeast, up from 167 bites per 100,000 visits a year earlier.
Nationwide, more than 89,000 cases of Lyme disease were reported to the CDC in 2023 through state health departments. But a CDC analysis of insurance claims suggests that actual cases of people seeking treatment for Lyme disease-transmitted by black-legged ticks infected with Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria-could be about 476,000 annually. While most cases still occur in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, and upper Midwest regions, climate change is expanding the ticks' habitat,
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