温暖的天气意味着是时候提醒蜱虫了

温暖的天气意味着是时候提醒蜱虫了

As warm weather sends people outdoors, some are encountering tenacious pests.

随着温暖的天气让人们走到户外，一些人遇到顽强的害虫。

Forget staying 6 feet apart: Ticks go for blood in the hardest-to-reach places on the human body.

忘了保持6英尺的距离吧:蜱虫会在人体最难够到的地方吸血。

Many of those ticks are infected with Lyme disease. The illness, which was first identified in Connecticut in the 1970s, is found in countries across the Northern Hemisphere. It's the most common tick-borne disease in both the United States and Europe.

许多蜱虫感染了莱姆病。这种疾病最早于20世纪70年代在康涅狄格州被发现，现在北半球许多国家都发现了这种疾病。它是美国和欧洲最常见的蜱传疾病。

And the area where Lyme disease is found is expanding.

莱姆病被发现的地区正在扩大。

Lyme disease is on the rise in the United Kingdom, and climate change is projected to worsen the spread of Lyme across northern Europe.

莱姆病在英国呈上升趋势，气候变化预计将使莱姆病在北欧的传播更加恶化。

And while it's still too soon to say how bad ticks will be this year, some indicators point to a population surge in the early part of the season in the United States.

虽然说今年蜱虫会有多严重还为时过早，但一些指标表明，美国的蜱虫数量将在季节初期激增。

The tick population is likely to fluctuate throughout the season anyway, said Mather, who is a professor in the department of plant sciences and entomology at the University of Rhode Island. "What we see in real time isn't always a good prognosticator for what could be happening a month or two months from now."

马瑟是罗德岛大学植物科学与昆虫学系的教授，他说，无论如何，蜱的数量在整个季节都有可能波动。“我们实时看到的情况，并不总是能很好地预测一两个月后可能发生的情况。”

What are the most serious tick-borne illnesses?

最严重的蜱传疾病是什么?

Worrying about the coronavirus pandemic doesn't mean other threats have gone away.

对冠状病毒大流行的担忧并不意味着其他威胁已经消失。

"There are numerous tick-borne pathogens that are on the rise," said Allison Gardner, a medical entomologist and assistant professor of arthropod vector biology at the University of Maine.

医学昆虫学家、缅因大学节肢动物病媒生物学助理教授艾莉森·加德纳说：“有许多蜱传播的病原体正在上升。”

Gardner noted that the United States contends with the parasitic infection babesiosis; it's also found in Europe.

加德纳指出，美国正在对付巴贝斯虫病的寄生虫感染;在欧洲也有。

In Europe, the viral tick-borne encephalitis is a problem, with 3,092 confirmed cases in European Union countries in 2018. There is an effective vaccine against the disease, which can cause fevers, headaches, paralysis and convulsions.

在欧洲，病毒性蜱传脑炎是一个问题，2018年欧盟国家有3092例确诊病例。这种疾病会导致发烧、头痛、瘫痪和抽搐，目前有一种有效的疫苗可以预防这种疾病。

The most common tick-borne danger in both the United States and Europe, however, is still from Lyme disease. And the vast majority of cases may go undetected.

然而，在美国和欧洲，最常见的蜱传危险仍然来自莱姆病。而且绝大多数病例可能都没有被发现。

Some 30,000 Lyme disease diagnoses are reported to the CDC each year, but the agency estimates that actual cases in the United States may be 10 times higher than that. A 2016 report in the Journal of Public Health estimated 85,000 annual cases of Lyme in Europe.

每年美国疾控中心接到的莱姆病诊断报告约有3万例，但该机构估计，美国的实际病例可能比这个数字高出10倍。《公共卫生杂志》2016年的一份报告估计，欧洲每年有8.5万例莱姆病病例。

Stay safe in the outdoors

在户外要注意安全

Gardner, the University of Maine medical entomologist, spends her days in the field dragging a light-colored cloth through tick habitats. The ticks grab onto the fabric, where their dark bodies show up clearly.

加德纳是缅因大学医学昆虫学家，每天都在野外拖着一块浅色的织物穿过蜱虫的栖息地。蜱虫抓住织物，黑色的身体清晰地显现出来。

"Light-colored clothing can make it easier to spot the ticks on you," said Gardner, whose work puts her in frequent close contact with the tiny creatures.

“浅色的衣服可以让你更容易发现身上的虱子，”加德纳说，她的工作使她经常与这些小生物密切接触。

Other ways to protect against ticks include tucking pants into socks. Since ticks crawl up from the ground, this makes it easier to spot them before they slip beneath your clothes.

其他防止蜱虫的方法还包括把裤子塞进袜子里。因为蜱虫是从地上爬上来的，这使得在它们潜入你的衣服之前更容易发现它们。