The rate of emergency room visits for tick bites hasn’t been this high since 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Teresa Steckler is an extension specialist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She said ticks are especially bad, despite the recent cold winter.
"I’m really mystified,” she said. “I was hoping that the really bad winter that we experienced this past January, where we got really cold weather for an extended period of time —which we haven't experienced in a several years — I was hoping that that would curtail some of the ticks, but I don't think it had any impact on them.”
In northern Illinois, the most common tick species are dog ticks and deer ticks, which between them can transmit seven different diseases.
Steckler said ticks are extra dense in suburban areas surrounded by woods – where deer live.
"And ticks are — I would believe — overwintering on certain animals like deer,” she said. “It's just a perfect storm of the ticks being able to survive and thrive right now.”
To keep ticks away from your skin, Steckler said you should tuck your pants into your socks and your shirt into your pants. You could also wrap double sided tape around the tops of your socks so that if ticks try to crawl up your legs, they get stuck on the tape.
If you’ve been bitten by a tick, remove it gently with tweezers and freeze it in a plastic bag with a rubbing alcohol-soaked cotton ball, so it doesn’t dry out. Save it in case you develop any flu-like symptoms, which can be a sign of tick-borne disease. If you've saved the tick, you can bring it with you to consult your doctor. If you don’t develop any symptoms, you can still send it in using a form on Bite Map Illinois.
Even if your pets are treated for ticks, it’s important to check their fur thoroughly when they come inside. If the tick hasn’t latched onto their skin, it could transfer onto humans.
She suggested visiting the Illinois Department of Public Health’s tick website, which has been recently updated to include safety recommendations and maps of where tick-borne diseases have been identified across the state.
