Tick, mosquito borne diseases on the rise — outside of San Joaquin

From The Lodi News-Sentinel
May 6, 2018

The Center for Disease Control reported this week that cases of mosquito- and tick-borne diseases in the United States tripled from 27,388 cases in 2004 to 96,075 in 2016, for a total of 640,000 cases in that 13-year period.

San Joaquin has seen relatively few mosquito- or tick-borne diseases since 2013, according to Dr. Gordon Arakawa, assistant public health officer for San Joaquin County. No cases of yellow fever have been reported in that five-year period, he said in an email, and only two cases of Lyme disease: one in 2014 and one in 2016.

Eight cases of Zika virus have been found, Arakawa said, seven in 2016 and one in 2017. Ten cases of malaria were reported since 2013, he said, one per year from 2013 to 2015, two in 2016 and five in 2017.

West Nile virus was the most common, with eight cases reported in 2013, nine in 2014, two in 2015, 13 in 2016 and 14 in 2017, Arakawa said, although no such diseases have been reported in 2018 as of yet.

Read more