Tick-Borne Illness Resembling Coronavirus Set to Resurface

A tick-borne illness has symptoms that resemble the coronavirus, according to reports. The infection, called anaplasmosis, causes symptoms like fever, muscle aches and respiratory failure, but unlike coronavirus it can be treated with a medicine called doxycycline. 

Health officials are worried that as the weather warms up a surge in the illness might happen in wooded areas and people like woodsmen might be at particularly high risks. 

“It’s a little challenging to cut through COVID news,” deputy director Byron Backenson of the state Health Department’s Bureau of Communicable Disease Control told the Times Union.

The infection, which is bacterial, affects more than 5,000 New Yorkers a year and is carried by deer ticks.

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