MORGANTOWN — “Just looking at the graph, it’s pretty shocking. We’ve been saying all along that if COVID never came around, we’d be focused on Lyme disease. New cases are growing at such a rate.”
That’s what regional epidemiologist Lucas Moore told The Dominion Post in 2022.
“Some of us think that may very well qualify as the next pandemic, just because the numbers are shooting through the roof,” former Monongalia County Health Officer Dr. Lee Smith said in March 2023, calling this county “ground zero for Lyme” in West Virginia.
Those remarks came with a heat map indicating the population density of Ixodes Scapularis — more commonly known as the black-legged tick or deer tick — was higher in Monongalia County than anywhere else in the state. This is the species of tick that carries Lyme disease.
During Thursday’s meeting of the Monongalia County Board of Health, Dr. Brian Huggins — Smith’s successor — explained there have already been 1,784 confirmed and probable cases in West Virginia this year as of July 18.
The trend continues.
In the six-year span from 2017 to 2022, the annual number of Lyme disease cases in West Virginia jumped nearly four-fold, from 648 to 2,470.
A major part of the issue, Huggins said, is that the disease is easily outpacing the funding and resources allocated to track and prevent it.
“The biggest problem is there’s no money,” he said. “The reality is everybody is hearing about it, but there is no money. There are no grants. That’s the challenge right now, generating enough buzz.”
West Virginia currently has one entomologist who occasionally travels the state collecting ticks to be tested.
According to Huggins, it would probably cost about $20,000 to do a thorough tick surveillance program just in Monongalia County.
“Lyme disease is a huge problem. It’s up every year. The reality is that we have hotter summers … We’re not having the winters that we had, and the ticks don’t die. When the ticks don’t die, they continue to breed and the disease doesn’t die,” Huggins said. “They did a tick drag at Coopers Rock. I want to say that was two years ago, and 33% of the ticks carried Lyme disease, 33%.”
MCHD Executive Director Anthony DeFelice explained that result began the as-of-yet unsuccessful push to increase collection and testing.
“We have been looking for funding to really implement a surveillance program and, at least at the federal level, there’s not that funding. So, we’re looking more to the state to see if we might be able to fund that,” he said.
Huggins said he would like to help develop a project for the state through which the laboratory at his alma mater, West Liberty University, could receive and test ticks from across the state.
“I’m looking for money. That’s where I’m at right now. We could actually sample every state park. We could sample every national forest in the state. We could come back every year and do a heat map of where we’re seeing a lot of the disease,” he said, explaining he doesn’t believe such information would frighten people away from the parks.
“That’s just not how people who are nature enthusiasts work. Most likely what it would do is they’d actually wear some protection and be more aware of what’s happening around them,” he said.
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