Wadsworth Center, NYS Dept of Health
The unseasonable warm weather that Monroe County and the City of Rochester have been experiencing has encouraged locals to increase outdoor activity. Reports from throughout the northern part of the United States and southern Canada suggest that the warm spring has also encouraged the deer tick to increase its outdoor activity. The deer tick carries Lyme Disease.
A report from Maine noted in Seacoastonline notes an increase in Lyme Disease cases in early 2010. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch quotes a veterinarian, Dr. Michael Paul, as stating that there are ten to twenty times more ticks than there were a decade ago. The article states that the deer tick now infests all 48 contiguous states and has moved into lower Canada. The Winnipeg Free-Press notes that the deer tick is now active in southern Manitoba. WRGB television sought comment from a NYS Wildlife Pathologist and began its story with “A warning for parents and pet owners: tick season is here and it's bad! “
The University of Rochester Medical Center has this to say about Lyme Disease:
Lyme disease (LD) is a multi-stage, multi-system bacterial infection caused by the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, a spiral shaped bacterium that is most commonly transmitted by a tick bite. The disease takes its name from Lyme, Connecticut, where the illness was first identified in the United States in 1975.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Lyme disease continues to be a rapidly emerging infectious disease, and is the leading cause of all insect-borne illness in the US. The number of annually reported cases has increased 25-fold since national surveillance began in 1982. About 20,000 people are infected each year in the US. The majority (95 percent) of cases are reported in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) ranks New York State tenth for incidence of Lyme Disease in its last reported year, 2008. There were 29.5 cases per 100,000 population. That was the highest rate in the five year period 2004-2008, with the lowest rate being in 2007 at 21.6:100,000.
Per the CDC, New York State reported 5,741 confirmed and 2,053 probable cases of Lyme Disease in 2008. This was at least 25% more cases than the next nearest state. 19.9% of all confirmed Lyme Disease cases in the United States in 2008 were from New York.
Monroe County has a contact for tick identification. Call the County Department of Public Health at 585-753-5171 for more information. New York has a tick identification service in the State Department of Health. They can be reached by phone at 518-402-5592.
The CDC website on Lyme Disease has a great deal of useful information. New York State provides a similar website.
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