COLUMBUS, June 26 -- She had been mowing the edge of the yard when her son came inside with the tick. He was seven. It was lodged behind his left ear, small enough that she had not noticed it during the sunscreen check before he went out, dark enough that she might have dismissed it as a fleck of dirt. She called the pediatrician's office first, then drove to the emergency room when the nurse on the line said it had likely been there long enough to require evaluation. The clinician who removed it told her she was the fourth mother from this county to come in that week.

In 2026, that scene is playing out at the highest weekly rate in nearly a decade. Emergency room visits for tick bites reached 118 per every 100,000 emergency department v...