More help is on the way to study the tick problem in Connecticut.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention recently funded the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES) to collect and test for more organisms that cause human diseases, including Lyme disease, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.
According to the article, CAES will begin testing for more tick species and for more pathogens.
The chart below shows the data from collected ticks for towns near Darien in 2017, the latest available:
| Town | Total_Identified | Total_Tested | Total_Positive | Percent_Positive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Norwalk | 212 | 190 | 50 | 0.263 |
| New Canaan | 181 | 167 | 46 | 0.275 |
| Stamford | 297 | 261 | 86 | 0.33 |
| Darien | 118 | 106 | 46 | 0.434 |
The full list including all towns is available here. A total of 5,577 ticks feeding on humans were submitted by residents, health departments, and physician offices for identification in 2017. Of these, 3,993 were tested for the evidence of infection with Borrelia burgdorferi, the causative organism for Lyme disease, and 1,277 (32.0%) were found positive. For information on submitting ticks please go to the CAES website here.
Connecticut provides a number of fantastic resources to help prevent tick-borne diseases including this fact sheet on prevention and use of insect repellents, and a handbook on tick management by Dr. Stafford. The CDC page on lyme disease https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/index.html
The Wall Street Journal said that Connecticut reported more than 35,000 cases of diseases contracted through tick bites from 2004 to 2016, according to the CDC. That makes it the state with the fifth most cases, behind Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
Tick season stretches from April to October, although infections peak during the summer months.