Health authorities see record number of tick bites during June heatwave
Dutch health authorities recorded a record number of tick bites at the end of June as a heat wave gripped the country. More than 30 percent of survey respondents reported bites for the first time since monitoring began.
The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) said its Tekenradar system showed the unprecedented weekly percentage in responses from 673 people. Researcher Kees van den Wijngaard said it had never occurred before since the system's launch in 2022.
The RIVM surveys more than 700 people each week about recent tick bites. During the same hot period, members of the public separately reported another 800 tick bites through the Tekenradar platform.
"Normally we also see a peak in this period, which has to do among other things with the weather conditions and that many people go on vacation. This is how ticks and people come into contact with each other earlier," van den Wijngaard told RTL.
Regional patterns varied. More than 40 percent of bites in Drenthe, Groningen, and Zeeland occurred in gardens. In Noord-Holland, Utrecht and Noord-Brabant, garden bites accounted for under 30 percent of cases. The RIVM said it could not explain the differences.
Nationwide so far this year, 34 percent of tick bites happened in gardens and 47 percent in forests.
Warm weather has continued to drive high numbers of bites in recent days, van den Wijngaard noted. However, if conditions turn extremely hot and dry with no rainfall, it could become too dry for ticks. "They cannot handle the heat well," he said.
Authorities urge immediate tick removal. About 20 percent of ticks are infected with Lyme disease bacteria, though only two out of 100 bitten people actually develop the illness. The longer a tick remains attached, the higher the transmission risk. In 47 percent of reported bites, the tick stayed longer than 12 hours.
