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Amid Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s Siberia hit by swarms of blood-sucking ticks
The alarming numbers of tick-bite patients has put additional pressure on hospitals in the sparsely-populated Siberia already battling rising cases of coronavirus deaths and infections.
Russia, which currently is among the top three countries with most number of Covid-19 cases in the world, is now facing a new threat: blood-sucking ticks including a new ‘mutant’ variety.
According to media reports, there has been a huge spike in the cases of tick bites in several Siberian regions. A report in Russian defence ministry’s own newspaper Zvezda says that these regions have been hit by huge swarms of hybrid ticks and in one region, there are reportedly 428 times more ticks than usual.
‘Mutant ticks are attacking - this is not a tabloid headline but a fact,’ stated Zvezda’s report.
The ticks latch on to humans from both long and short grass before finding a place to bite their victims, from which they suck blood, says a report in Daily Mail.
The mutant tick ‘is capable of carrying infectious agents associated with both parent species’ and everyone bitten by a tick must seek medical help to check if the creature is infected, says the report.
The alarming numbers of tick-bite patients has put additional pressure on hospitals in the sparsely-populated Siberia already battling rising cases of coronavirus deaths and infections.
The hospitals are running out of vaccines and medications for the type of diseases which ticks can cause in humans. These include encephalitis which can lead to permanent brain damage and the often debilitating if untreated Lyme disease which attacks joints, heart and the nervous system.
The Daily Mail report says that in Sverdlovsk region in the Urals, 17,242 people have been bitten by ticks, among them 4,334 children, with 36 per cent said to have Lyme disease.
Experts say that the mild winter is seen as a key reason for the rise in tick numbers.
