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Give Yourself a COVID-19 Break: Get Outdoors (But Here’s a New Tick Study)

March 16, 2020

Social isolation doesn’t mean indoor isolation. Go for a hike. Walk along the dunes at your favorite beach.

Get out and breathe some fresh air.

You’ll be far from the coronavirus. Just watch out for ticks. Close to half of the 2,500 adult ticks collected by the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station last season tested positive for Lyme disease, according to a report released earlier this month. And with a mild winter nearing its end, the coming tick season could be substantial.

The state Department of Public Health offers these tips:

• Avoid tall grass and over-grown, brushy areas.
• Stay in the middle of the trails when hiking in the woods.
• Wear light-colored clothing so the ticks can be easily seen.
• Wear long pants to provide a better barrier than shorts.
• Tuck pants into socks creates a barrier and ticks will not be able to get to your skin.
• Wear long-sleeved shirts and closed shoes when in tick infested areas.
• Use insect repellent to significantly reduce the chance of tick bites and the transmission of Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases.
• DEET is the primary active ingredient in most tick repellents and is considered the most effective. It must be used as directed on the container.
• Examine yourself, your children, and pets for ticks when returning indoors.
• Remove feeding ticks as soon as possible. Ticks need to feed for 24 hours before transmission occurs.
• When returning indoors, shower using a wash cloth or buff to remove walking ticks on your body. Ticks have a tendency to walk on the body before biting and feeding.
• Talk to your veterinarian to find out how to protect your pets from tick bites.

What To Do if You Find a Tick

If you find a tick embedded in the skin, the chances of transmission of a parasite or a bacteria from the tick to the human is low in the first 20 to 24 hours.

Why? Well, leaving the tick and allowing the parasite to enter your blood is a bit of a process. The parasites that reside in the tick’s midgut, or belly, first need to warm up, detach, then travel to the tick’s salivary glands to be transmitted to a human. Before that even happens, the tick takes a good 10 minutes to latch on securely and then must feed for a while.

The process — from latching on to bacterial arrival in the salivary glands — typically takes 36 to 48 hours. Remember, spirochetes are microscopic, so to keep it in perspective their travel distance is essentially equivalent to  crossing a few state lines on a cross-country trip.

How To Remove a Tick

Try the Soapy Cotton Ball technique before reaching for tweezers. Apply liquid soap to a cotton ball until it’s soaked and gently cover the tick with the soap-soaked cotton ball for 30 seconds.

The tick will stick to the cotton ball when you lift it away.

If you have to resort to the tweezers, use blunt, but fine-tipped tweezers (as in skinny but not sharp) to grasp the tick close to the skin (on its head) and pull straight up without twisting or crushing, until it releases its grip. Do this slowly and steadily. Remember, the goal is to take the whole thing out without breaking it, like in Jenga. If you grab the head, the tick will release its grip.

When it comes to very small deer ticks and nymph (baby tick) removal, The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends using a credit card edge to scrape it away over the tweezers dance.

If the tick is not fully removed, clean the skin with rubbing alcohol and use a sterile needle to uncover the head or any other tick parts and lift it these out. Minuscule tick parts that may have been too small for removal will eventually shed with the skin. Post-removal, wash the wound and your hands with soap and water and apply antibiotic ointment.

If you’re concerned about the way a bite looks or if fever,  joint pain or rash develop, come in to see us at any walk-in GoHealth Urgent Care Center.

What Lyme Disease Looks Like

A rash that appears from three to 30 days after the bite, expanding up to 12 inches. It may or may not develop into a bull’s-eye pattern. But be careful: Up to 30 percent of people infected with Lyme disease do not get a rash. Other symptoms might resemble the flu: Fever, chills, headache and body aches. Check with your doctor as soon as possible.

What to Expect at an Urgent Care Center

A provider will likely assess the bite, remove any remaining parts and determine whether you need a one-time dose of antibiotic, or a longer period of treatment. This is based on several factors, including the look of the bite, symptoms and rashes, the number of days the tick had been embedded and the number of days that have passed after the bite.

If the bite is recent, do not expect a blood test. The results can be falsely negative right after a bite.

Click here to schedule a virtual visit with a Hartford HealthCare-GoHealth Urgent care doctor.

Hartford HealthCare-GoHealth Urgent Care centers are open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. To make an appointment, check wait times or to find other GoHealth locations, click here.