The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit has announced the start of their active tick surveillance program.
This involves the identification and testing of ticks that are collected by public health staff.
There are mostly two varieties of ticks in Windsor-Essex, dark ticks and deer ticks, which are black legged ticks.
Amandeep Hans, a Health Promotions Specialist, says the black legged ticks are what they're looking for because they are the ones that carry the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.
The field surveillance is conducted at public parks and trails that are frequently used by residents to retrieve local data of tick populations.
Crews were out at the Ojibway Nature Centre on Friday morning, and they'll also be surveilling in Ruscom Shores, Chrysler Greenway in the Essex area and the Hillman Marsh which they're doing for the first time.
WECHU reminds residents to be careful of ticks when spending time outside, as the region has been deemed an endemic area for ticks.
Hans says crews are doing tick dragging to identify the type of ticks that are found in the region.
"So we'll have our public health inspectors go out with the white cloth that they have, and they will be dragging here and if they find ticks they will be collected, identified and sent to the national lab for testing and identification again," she said.
She says Windsor-Essex has seen a growing issue with ticks over the last number of years.
"Until 2018 only Point Pelee Natural Park was the one that was endemic black legged ticks," Hans continued. "After that in 2019 when we got the new map from Public Health Ontario, most of Windsor-Essex is now endemic for black legged ticks."
Hans says climate change leading to increased temperatures, rainfall and humidity are reasons for the increase in tick populations.
She says they health unit is hearing about increased instances of people noticing ticks either on themselves or their pets this year.
The Health Unit used to have people bring in ticks themselves, but they stopped doing that in 2020.
"Now they can submit the tick through our online service which is etick.ca for identification. If the tick has been attached to their body for over 24 hours they should be following up with their healthcare provider. They need to take the tick out, they should always use tweezers or keys to take it out, do not use your hands to take the tick out," she stated.
The WECHU has made several recommendations to avoid ticks:
- Avoid walking in tall grass and stay on the centre of paths
- Cover up. Wear long- sleeved shirts and pants
- Wear light coloured clothing to spot ticks easily
- Tuck your pants into your socks and wear closed toed shoes
- Do a full body check on yourself, children and pets after being outdoors
- Shower within 2 hours of being outdoors
- Put your clothes into a dryer on high heat (at least 60 minutes) to kill any possible ticks
- Put a tick collar on your pets
- Keep grass in your yard short
WECHU crews dragging for ticks (Photo taken by AM800's Aaron Mahoney)