Ticks in Bavaria – number over ten years – Bavaria

• The risk of being bitten by a tick is currently high
• The pests feel particularly comfortable in the mild weather of recent months.
• The number of TBE cases in Bavaria has increased since 2012 88 districts and towns without counties are under threat.

Last winter was too mild, the spring too hot and too dry, and the summer is still not really cool. While crops are suffering from this time, the pests are feeling very good. Especially the ticks, whose number has soared. People who often spend time in the garden report more tick bites than ever before. One example: from a group of twelve people who spent a few hours last Sunday in a meadow in southern Bavaria, seven people found a tick bite in the evening and the next morning. Small leeches wait in the grbad, on shrubs and in the undergrowth. If a person pbades by, they hang on to their clothes, in order to look unnoticed for a discovered body part, and then to hang on the skin.

"This year, the risk of being bitten by a tick is particularly high," says Gerhard Dobler of the German Infection Research Center (DZIF) in Munich. "We will have the most ticks in the last decade." Since 2009, the DZIF researcher and his team are studying tick-transmitted TBE virus in Germany

Tick-borne tick encephalitis (TBE) and Lyme borreliosis, which can usually be treated with antibiotics, are infections transmitted by the most common ticks. TBE causes flu-like symptoms. But not all infected ticks cause an infection in humans. According to the National Board of Health, however, in ten percent of cases, dangerous meningitis and encephalitis can develop. Due to mandatory reporting since 2001, more specific statements about frequency and distribution are possible for TBE disorders.

After registering the lowest number of cases since the introduction of the registration requirement in 2012, 195 cases in Germany (including 90 in Bavaria) 2013 and 2016 again. In Bavaria, there has been an increase in the number of TBE cases since 2012 (2012: 90 cases, 2013: 177, 2014: 122, 2015: 128, 2016: 159). In 2017, 234 diseases were reported in Bavaria, more than ever since the introduction of the registration requirement.

The Robert Koch Institute in Berlin annually evaluates TBE risk areas in Germany. According to the report, 88 of the 96 districts and towns without a county in Bavaria are currently in TBE risk zones. These include the cities of Nuremberg, Pbadau, Regensburg, Würzburg and Bamberg. The new additions are the five counties of Starnberg, Munich (not Munich), Günzburg, Weilheim-Schongau and Augsburg (not the city of Augsburg).

There is no effective treatment for FSME. In tick areas, it is therefore recommended to wear long clothes and to use insect repellents. While this reduces the risk of tick bites, it does not offer safe protection. The only reliable protection measure is the vaccine. Experts point out that a tick should be removed as soon as possible after a bite, to minimize the risk of infection (information about the withdrawal from the State of Health Office: https : //www.lgl.bayern.de/gesundheit/infektionsschutz/infektionskrankheiten_a_z /borreliose/zecken_entfernen.

htm). There is also a danger on the sports and football fields. In May, the football fields were examined for the presence of ticks during a national campaign. Although Bavaria has ranked in the back third of the Länder, the reason why everything is clear is not it. "The results clearly show that ticks can appear at surprisingly high densities in sports facilities as well as in the often bushy environments of football pitches," says tick researcher Jochen Süss. 19659017] "Cases north of known risk areas are increasing"

Scientists are increasingly monitoring tick infections in northern Germany. Gerhard Dobler of the Institute of Microbiology of the Bundeswehr explains how dangerous the danger is.

Interview by Felix Hütten

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