Invasion of mutant blood-sucking ticks hits Russia, with hospitals running out of vaccines

A new ‘mutant’ blood-sucking tick has been discovered in Russia amid a surge in tick bite victims, according to official government papers.

In one region of Siberia, there is reportedly 428 times more ticks than usual, reports from the Russian defence ministry’s own newspaper suggest.

And scientists have now reportedly discovered a mutant form of the arachnid which is said to have the ‘worst qualities’ of two common forms of ticks found in Russia.

The swam has also sparked growing fears that hospitals in the sparsely populated Siberia are running out of vaccines and medications for the types of diseases which ticks can inflict on the humans they bite.

These include encephalitis – an inflammation of the brain which is estimated to have killed more than 150,000 in 2015 – and the often debilitating if untreated Lyme disease.

The scale of the swarm has left some hospitals – already stretched with rising numbers of coronavirus deaths and infections – without vaccines and medications.

In the Krasnoyarsk region, in central Russia, medics report 8,215 tick bite cases including 2,125 involving children.

The suburbs of Krasnoyarsk city are infested with 214 ticks per square kilometre, compared with the ‘safe’ figure of 0.5.

Almost two per cent carry tick-borne viral encephalitis, which can lead to permanent brain damage, with a third capable of passing on tick-borne borreliosis – or Lyme disease, attacking the joints, heart, and nervous system, reports the region’s Epidemiology and Hygiene Centre.

Several Siberian regions have been hit by swarms of hybrid ticks, reported Zvezda, the Russian defence ministry’s newspaper.

Among the report includes mention of a ‘mutant’ tick, which combine the ‘worst qualities’ of two common types of Russian tick – Ixodes persulcatus, the taiga tick, and the ‘malicious’ Pavlovsky or Far Eastern tick.

‘Mutant ticks are attacking – this is not a tabloid headline but a fact,’ stated its report.

The ticks latch on to humans from both long and short grass before finding a place to bite their victims, from which they suck blood.

A ‘large number inter-species hybrids’ which produce ‘fertile offspring’ have invaded Novosibirsk and Tomsk regions, said Dr Nina Tikhunova, of the Institute of Chemical Biology and Fundamental Medicine, Novosibirsk.

The mild winter is seen as a key reason for the rise in tick numbers.