The blood-sucking insect lurks in the forest, hoping to attach itself to a leg or dog that is out for a walk.
– The tick starts to be active when it is 7-8 degrees outside. So now it’s a good idea to check if you’ve been out in woods and fields with tall grass and a lot of vegetation, says infection control specialist Einar Sagberg in Drammen municipality.
According to the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI), the forest tick is the biggest spreader of infection among the bloodsuckers in Northern Europe.
It is important to also check the pet, where the tick may be hidden in the fur.
Photo: Siv Kristin Sællmann / NRK
Resists red ring
If you are out in nature, it is not so easy to avoid ticks. The nymphs and larvae are quite small and difficult to detect. And they are fast.
– I get bitten by ticks every now and then, me too. Almost every season, says Sagberg.
The tick can transmit several diseases, and the two most common is the Lyme disease bacterium and The TBE virus.
– If you are bitten, when should you contact a doctor?
– If you get an increasing red ring around the bite site in the following days, then you should see a doctor. It is the first sign that a Lyme infection is growing in the skin. We then treat it with antibiotics.
In approximately 98 percent of all tick bites, there is no transmission of infection, and you do not get sick. About two out of 100 tick bites lead to the disease Lyme disease, write Norsk Helseinformatikk.
Can be contagious immediately
FHI also asks people to be on the lookout for the following symptoms in the period after a tick bite:
- Laxity
- Main work
- Fever
- Facial paralysis, muscle pain or fluid accumulation in joints
The forest tick thrives best in moist places with grass, small bushes, undergrowth and in open forests where there are many deer.
– How quickly must the tick be removed to avoid the dangerous infection?
– The Lyme bacteria take one to two days to be transferred, so he has to sit for a while. The TBE virus is present in the tick’s biting apparatus, and is transferred quite immediately when you are bitten, so it is difficult to prevent transmission of that, says the head of infection control.
Infection control specialist Einar Sagberg asks people to keep an eye on the symptoms after a tick bite.
Photo: Dana Khalouf / NRK
Remember to shake the clothes
There are no statistics on how many Norwegians are bitten each year, but in a 2019 study from Søgne, which is an area with a high prevalence of ticks, 85 percent of the inhabitants had been bitten earlier in their lives, and 35 percent in the last year , according to the Tick Centre.
There are some insecticides that help against ticks, and otherwise Sagberg has the following advice:
– Wear slightly long trousers if you are out in tall vegetation, and remember to shake your clothes well when you get home, so that ticks don’t have time to attach themselves. Watch yourself, or each other, because then you can catch ticks while they are crawling, before they attach themselves.
It is also important to check dogs and cats running around in the terrain.
– Is it like that the tick likes some people better than others?
– We don’t have reliable data on that, but we do hear that there are some who say they get a lot of tick bites, while others never get bitten. So it is possible that there are some body odors that are more attractive.
