Ticks are having a banner year in Middle Tennessee, and emergency rooms are feeling it. Doctors in Nashville and public-health officials say a sharp jump in tick activity this spring is driving more people to local ERs at rates not seen in nearly a decade. Warm, dry weather and early leaf-out have pushed ticks and their animal hosts closer to yards, trails, and parks, so casual time outdoors is turning into surprise encounters.
National surveillance numbers back up what local clinicians are seeing. Emergency department visits for tick bites have climbed fast, reaching levels the Centers for Disease Control flags as unusually high for this point in the season, according to the CDC. Those syndromic dashboards pull in near-real-time ER reports and are a key early warning system when tick activity spikes.
“This is the season for tick activity, the weather is starting to warm up,” said Cosby Stone, an allergist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in an interview with WSMV. Stone noted that animals moving around earlier in the year, paired with taller spring grass, give ticks more chances to latch on to people…