Public health officials and entomologists are warning people to be careful of ticks when they go outside, especially given the impacts of an unusually mild winter and coronavirus cabin fever that's causing some to spend more time outside.

While multiple state parks were closed Saturday and Tuesday as their parking lots hit capacity, it's not just trails you need to be worried about: It's your own backyard.

There's evidence that "maybe as much as 75% of all of the tick bites are acquired in activities right around the yard," Connecticut State Entomologist Kirby Stafford III said, noting that children are particularly at risk.

"When people are going out in their own yards, they don't tend to wear long pants tucked in the socks and put on a repellent," he said.

To prevent against tick bites, he recommends using picaridin or DEET on your skin, or a permethrin-based repellent on your clothing, and checking for ticks after going outdoors.

Stafford is the head of the entomology department within the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, which began a federally funded active tick surveillance program last year.

Overall, more than 2,500 ticks were collected from 40 public sites in Connecticut in the spring, summer and fall of last year, and then screened for the pathogens that cause Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, babesiosis, hard tick relapsing fever, and Powassan virus. CAES announced the results in February: 46% of the adult deer ticks collected were infected with the pathogen that causes Lyme disease.

Stafford said the department got a cut in funding for the surveillance program this year — which comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, through the Connecticut Department of Public Health — but has enough to keep it going.

Connecticut residents also can submit ticks they find to CAES for free to be tested for Lyme disease, anaplasmosis and babesiosis. Stafford said Lyme disease has been increasing nationally but declining in Connecticut, though rates are still high.

But the mild winter meant he "saw a fair amount of adult deer tick activity through the winter months," and he expects this to be a "pretty robust" year for tick activity.

Preventing against tick bites in the age of COVID-19

Similarly, Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management Director Janet Coit said in a news release, "With a very mild winter in which many more ticks than usual have likely survived until spring, it could be shaping up to be a bad year for tick bites and disease transmission."

Expecting many more people to be outside this year, Rhode Island — which has the fifth-highest rate of Lyme disease in the country — launched a Lyme disease prevention campaign last week.

DEM noted that 70% to 80% of people with Lyme disease will develop a rash, according to the CDC, but others will just "feel sick, with headaches, fever, body aches, and fatigue."

Sound familiar?

In a conversation with The Day a month ago, Stonington Borough resident Carolyn Yost was sounding the alarm about Lyme disease, noting the symptoms are sometimes similar to those of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

She feared that people with flu-like symptoms would get tested for the coronavirus and be around people who do have COVID-19, get infected, and then be in a situation that's "twice as bad."

Yost is the owner of Carolyn Yost Estate Jewelry & Stonington Antiques, but she also is a passionate advocate for picaridin, which she has been selling since becoming an Avon representative 10 years ago.

She said she knows too many people who have had tick-borne diseases, including her nephew in Waterford, and as a self-employed person, there would be nobody to back her up if she was debilitated.

She sells picaridin in the form of an aerosol, pump spray or towelette, selling two 4-ounce bottles of pump spray for $15 and two cans of aerosol for $20. Yost is offering curbside pickup at her 148 Water St. shop and local delivery.

e.moser@theday.com