Tickborne Diseases

ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Local health officials are urging residents to take extra precautions when spending time outdoors as tick borne illnesses are on the rise.  

Ticks are nasty little arachnids that live by feeding off of your blood. But if that’s not scary enough, Zanesville-Muskingum County Health Department Epidemiologist Kaili Shaffer says the spread of tick borne diseases are increasing at an alarming rate across the state.

“So they get them from each other basically,” Shaffer said. “They spread them to themselves and then they carry them, so they don’t necessarily like have Lyme Disease themselves but they’ll carry that bacteria they get that causes Lyme disease and then when they bite us, they’ve spread that bacteria to us and then we get Lyme Disease. So we have a lot of Lyme Disease, we also have a lot of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and sometimes we’ll see Ehrlichiosis but that’s kind of like the rare one that we see. But definitely Rocky Mountain and Lyme disease.”

People usually associate tick bites that cause rashes, especially the circular ‘bullseye rashes’ as the indication that they need to seek medical treatment. But Shaffer says sometimes rashes may not appear.

“Other symptoms can include increased fatigue, joint aches, head ache, just overall body muscle issues going on,” Shaffer said. “But that’s what you’re really going to see for Lyme Disease. So Lyme Disease specifically, you can get long term arthritis if it’s not taken care of. So we talked about the joint pain, you can also get joint swelling. So you can have you know Lyme or arthritis for a really long time, sometimes lifelong. That’s usually what you’re going to see like, long period.”

Confirmed cases of Lyme Disease in Muskingum County have steadily risen from 17 in 2017 to 89 in 2021 and 291 in 2025. For more information about tick disease symptoms and prevention you can visit the health department online.