Tick Bites Are on the Rise

Pulling weeds, walk­ing the dog, or brush­ing off grass after a game — these every­day moments can end with a tick on your skin.

This year, more peo­ple are get­ting caught off guard. Emer­gency room vis­its for tick bites are at their high­est since 2017, accord­ing to the CDC, with spikes across the Mid­west, not just in usu­al hotspots out East. But here’s some­thing worth know­ing before you head to the ER: for the vast major­i­ty of tick bites, the emer­gency room isn’t the right place to go. Imme­di­ate care can han­dle a tick bite quick­ly, often with a short­er wait and a low­er bill, and the ER is best saved for the rare sit­u­a­tions that are gen­uine­ly an emergency.

The reas­sur­ing part? Most tick bites are far more annoy­ing than they are dan­ger­ous. Know­ing how to safe­ly remove a tick, what symp­toms to watch for, and when to call a provider can help pre­vent a minor encounter from becom­ing some­thing bigger. 

Why You’re Hear­ing So Much About Ticks This Year 

Tick pop­u­la­tions don’t grow because of one sin­gle thing. Mild win­ters let more of them sur­vive. Longer humid sea­sons stretch out the months they’re active. As sub­urbs spread clos­er to wood­ed areas, the spaces where ticks live and the spaces where peo­ple live keep overlapping.

You don’t have to be deep in the woods to run into one. Ticks turn up in tall grass, leaf piles, sports fields, parks, camp­sites, and any­where deer pass through. Pets count too. Dogs in par­tic­u­lar can pick up ticks dur­ing a walk and car­ry them right through the front door. 

What a Tick Bite Actu­al­ly Looks Like 

If you’ve nev­er spot­ted one before, a tick can be easy to mis­take for a freck­le, a scab, or a small mole.

The nymphs, which are about the size of a pop­py seed, can be espe­cial­ly hard to notice.

The bite itself usu­al­ly does­n’t hurt. That’s why peo­ple often have no idea it hap­pened until they catch sight of the tick in the show­er or feel a small bump days later.

A typ­i­cal bite leaves behind a small red spot, mild swelling, and a lit­tle itch­i­ness. For most peo­ple, it clears up on its own with­in a few days, much like a mos­qui­to bite.

What deserves more atten­tion is any­thing that changes. A spot that grows. A rash that spreads out­ward. Or new symp­toms that show up days or even weeks lat­er, when you might not even con­nect them back to that hike you took. 

How to Remove a Tick the Right Way 

Find­ing a tick attached to your skin is unset­tling. The instinct to grab, twist, or burn it off is under­stand­able. It’s also exact­ly what you don’t want to do.

The CDC’s rec­om­mend­ed removal method is straightforward:

1. Use fine-tipped tweez­ers to grasp the tick as close to the skin as pos­si­ble, near its mouth.
2. Pull straight up slow­ly and steadi­ly. Avoid twist­ing or yank­ing, which can leave parts behind.
3. After removal, clean the bite area and your hands with soap and water or rub­bing alcohol.
4. Dis­pose of the tick by flush­ing it, seal­ing it in tape, or plac­ing it in alcohol.

Skip the petro­le­um jel­ly, nail pol­ish, lit match­es, and any oth­er folk rem­e­dy meant to ​“smoth­er” the tick. These can stress the tick and make it more like­ly to release flu­ids into the bite, which is the oppo­site of what you want.

Tim­ing mat­ters. The longer a tick remains attached, the greater the risk of dis­ease trans­mis­sion. Most experts at Johns Hop­kins point out that prompt removal, ide­al­ly with­in 24 hours, sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­ers the risk.

If the mouth­parts break off and stay in the skin, leave them alone. The body usu­al­ly push­es the left­over mate­r­i­al out on its own as it heals, sim­i­lar to a splinter. 

Not sure you got it all — or just want a sec­ond set of hands? You don’t have to fig­ure this out alone. Stop by a Duly Imme­di­ate Care Cen­ter and a provider can remove the tick safe­ly, check the bite, and walk you through what to watch for next. It’s a quick vis­it that can save you a lot of guess­ing lat­er. Find a Duly ICC loca­tion near you. >

Not Every Tick Bite Leads to Lyme Disease

This is one of the biggest mis­un­der­stand­ings about ticks, and it’s worth say­ing clear­ly: a tick bite is not the same as a Lyme diag­no­sis. Only cer­tain tick species car­ry the bac­te­ria that cause Lyme, and even when a tick is infect­ed, it usu­al­ly has to be attached for many hours before it can trans­mit the bac­te­ria. Plen­ty of bites end with noth­ing more than a small red mark.

That said, ticks can trans­mit oth­er ill­ness­es too, includ­ing Rocky Moun­tain spot­ted fever, ehrli­chio­sis, anaplas­mo­sis, and alpha-gal syn­drome (an unusu­al aller­gy to red meat trig­gered by cer­tain tick bites).

Lyme remains the most com­mon, with an esti­mat­ed 476,000 cas­es diag­nosed and treat­ed each year in the U.S.

Ear­ly symp­toms from many of these look a lot like the flu, which is why peo­ple some­times shrug them off at first. Catch­ing them ear­ly makes treat­ment far sim­pler, so it pays to men­tion a recent tick bite to your provider even if you feel fine. 

Symp­toms Worth Call­ing About

A nor­mal bite fades and dis­ap­pears. If symp­toms linger, spread, or seem out of pro­por­tion, they may sig­nal a more seri­ous issue that may require prompt med­ical atten­tion. Reach out to a health­care provider if you notice any of the fol­low­ing in the days or weeks after a bite:

• A rash that expands or shows up away from the bite site
• Fever, chills, or unusu­al fatigue
• Headaches, mus­cle aches, or joint pain
• Swollen lymph nodes
• Facial droop­ing or weakness
• Warmth, pus, or wors­en­ing red­ness at the bite

For these kinds of symp­toms, an imme­di­ate care cen­ter is usu­al­ly your best first stop. If you’re not sure whether your symp­toms are seri­ous, con­tact a health­care provider prompt­ly instead of wait­ing it out. Duly’s Imme­di­ate Care Cen­ters can eval­u­ate a tick bite, check for signs of infec­tion, and dis­cuss if pre­ven­tive treat­ment is need­ed for your sit­u­a­tion — typ­i­cal­ly with a short­er wait than the ER and at a low­er cost.

The ER is for true emer­gen­cies only. Go to the ER for trou­ble breath­ing, a severe aller­gic reac­tion, chest pain, con­fu­sion, neu­ro­log­i­cal symp­toms like weak­ness or slurred speech, or a high fever that won’t come down. For any­thing short of that — a bite you’re unsure about, a spread­ing rash, flu-like symp­toms — imme­di­ate care is the faster, more prac­ti­cal choice.

If you’re not sure whether your symp­toms are seri­ous, con­tact a health­care provider prompt­ly instead of wait­ing it out. Duly’s Imme­di­ate Care Cen­ters can eval­u­ate a tick bite, check for signs of infec­tion, and dis­cuss if pre­ven­tive treat­ment is need­ed for your situation.

Some symp­toms require imme­di­ate emer­gency care. Go to the ER for trou­ble breath­ing, a severe aller­gic reac­tion, chest pain, con­fu­sion, neu­ro­log­i­cal symp­toms like weak­ness or slurred speech, or a high fever that won’t come down. 

Can Antibi­otics Pre­vent Lyme Dis­ease After a Bite?

In some cas­es, yes. A sin­gle dose of antibi­otics tak­en short­ly after a high-risk tick bite can low­er the chance of devel­op­ing Lyme dis­ease. Whether your provider rec­om­mends it depends on the type of tick, how long it was attached, where you were when you got bit­ten, and your own health history.

The catch is tim­ing. Pre­ven­tive treat­ment works best with­in 72 hours of the bite, so this isn’t some­thing to sit on. A quick vis­it to imme­di­ate care well inside that win­dow is often all it takes.

How to Make Tick Bites Less Like­ly in the First Place

Pre­ven­tion does most of the heavy lift­ing here. Small habits stack up.

Before head­ing out­side, wear long sleeves and pants in grassy or wood­ed areas (tuck­ing pants into socks looks goofy, but it works). Apply an EPA-reg­is­tered insect repel­lent with DEET, picaridin, or oil of lemon euca­lyp­tus, and stick to the cen­ter of trails when you can.

Once you’re back inside, do a full-body tick check. Pay spe­cial atten­tion to the scalp, behind the ears, the back of the knees, the under­arms, and the waist­band. Show­er with­in a cou­ple of hours, and toss your clothes in the dry­er on high heat for about ten min­utes. Heat kills ticks faster than wash­ing does.

For pets, ask your vet­eri­nar­i­an about tick pre­ven­tion prod­ucts and run your hands through their fur after walks, espe­cial­ly around the ears, col­lar, and bel­ly. Around the house, keep grass cut short, rake up leaf piles, and clear brush back from play areas.

A Few Words for Parents

Find­ing a tick on your child can feel like a small cri­sis. Kids spend a lot of time low to the ground and close to grass, which puts them at high­er risk than most adults. The good news is that the steps are the same: remove the tick care­ful­ly with tweez­ers, clean the area, and keep an eye on your child for the next sev­er­al weeks.

Watch for fever, a new rash, tired­ness that seems out of char­ac­ter, headaches, or act­ing ​“off” in a way you can’t quite name. You know your kid. If some­thing feels dif­fer­ent, it’s worth get­ting checked — and for a tick bite, that check almost always belongs at imme­di­ate care rather than the ER.

The Bot­tom Line

Tick activ­i­ty is up, but the response to it does­n’t need to be. Most bites are han­dled at home with tweez­ers and a lit­tle soap. The ones that need med­ical atten­tion usu­al­ly announce them­selves with the symp­toms above — and for near­ly all of them, imme­di­ate care is the right place to go, not the emer­gency room. Save the ER for true emer­gen­cies; for every­thing else, imme­di­ate care gets you seen faster and for less.

If you’ve found a tick and aren’t sure what to do next, or if you’ve devel­oped symp­toms after spend­ing time out­doors, sched­ule a vis­it with your Duly pri­ma­ry care provider or stop by a Duly Imme­di­ate Care loca­tion. A short con­ver­sa­tion now can save a lot of guess­ing later.

Enjoy your sum­mer! Just remem­ber to give your­self a quick check before you head back inside.