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With the COVID pandemic coming under control, lawmakers in the Hudson Valley and other Lyme disease hotspots hope attention, and money, return to tick-borne disease education and research.
It seems ticks were out in greater force in the spring than in recent history.
“The early data from our area in the Hudson Valley suggests that, at least for black-legged ticks, this is a greater than normal year,” says Ostfeld. “An average year is dangerous, and this is even more dangerous in 2021.”
Especially, says Dr. Rick Ostfeld, the nymph-stage tick, which was active in June and poses the greatest risk of disease transmission to people. On a personal note, Ostfeld says he also is seeing many more dog ticks. Republican state Senator Sue Serino also notices a tick surge.
HHS Aims to Accelerate Technologies for Combatting Lyme Disease RolfAasa/iStock
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The Health and Human Services Department recently kicked off market research to inform an ambitious, multimillion-dollar effort to spur rapid breakthroughs against Lyme disease, a common tick-borne illness that can upend lives.
“With 30-plus years of the funding for Lyme and everything not going up much but the cases increasing a lot patients have looked at it as the government is ignoring them, and denying their suffering. And it s just been really antagonistic,” HHS Chief Data Scientist Kristen Honey told
Nextgov this week. “Usually when there s political or scientific controversy like that, it means we need more data. We need more information, more science and science will be our way out.”
Servicemembers are particularly at risk for Lyme disease; they live, work, and play on bases where Lyme is rampant. Some 75 percent of all U.S. military installations are located in states where 99 percent of the approximately 500,000 tickborne disease,