At least 60 reports of Lyme disease so far as Ontario enters tick season

Peak tick season is only just beginning but reports of bites – and tick-borne illnesses – are already higher than normal in Ontario.

Peak tick season is only just beginning but reports of bites – and tick-borne illnesses – are already higher than normal in Ontario.

Ontario is home to 13 established species of ticks, with dozens more reported across the province. The insects, found year-round, are most active in the summer months, when temperatures stay above 0 C. While not all ticks carry infectious agents, and not everyone who is bitten by an infected tick will develop symptoms of disease, a bite can expose humans to an array of health concerns, including Lyme disease.

So far this year, at least 1,124 sightings of blacklegged ticks, the species most likely to transmit disease, have been reported in Ontario. Just over 600 of those were found on humans, according to eTick.ca, the primary public reporting platform for monitoring ticks across Canada.

Reports made to the platform have been increasing since it launched in 2014. Five years ago, in 2019, the organization received just over 120 reports of blacklegged ticks in Ontario over the same timeframe.

While there isn’t usually much activity on the platform prior to April, this year “people and [their] pets have been encountering ticks in parts of southern Ontario and a few spots in eastern Ontario in December and January,” Associate Professor Manisha Kulkarni with the University of Ottawa’s School of Epidemiology and Public Health said in a media release.

Kulkarni said Ontario has seen a continued expansion of the species in Canada, with more regions, such as Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic provinces, reaching the endemic stage.

Historically in Ontario, blacklegged ticks were found only in cooler areas, near the shores of the Great Lakes. But according to the most recent map of established risk areas, the insects can now be found many miles inland and more and more often, in urban and residential areas.