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The lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum, is a vector of Ehrlichia chaffeensis and E. ewingii, causal agents of human ehrlichiosis, and has demonstrated marked geographic expansion in recent years. A. americanum ticks often outnumber the vector of Lyme disease, Ixodes scapularis, where both ticks are sympatric, yet cases of Lyme disease far exceed ehrlichiosis cases. We quantified the risk for ehrlichiosis relative to Lyme disease by using relative tick encounter frequencies and infection rates for these 2 species in Monmouth County, New Jersey, USA. Our calculations predict >1 ehrlichiosis case for every 2 Lyme disease cases, >2 orders of magnitude higher than current case rates (e.g., 2 ehrlichiosis versus 439 Lyme disease cases in 2014). This result implies ehrlichiosis is grossly underreported (or misreported) or that many infections are asymptomatic. We recommend expansion of tickborne disease education in the Northeast United States to include human health risks posed by A. americanum ticks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 is challenging many societal institutions, including our criminal justice systems. Some have proposed or enacted (e.g., the State of New Jersey) reductions in the jail and/or prison populations. We present a mathematical model to explore the epidemiologic impact of such interventions in jails and contrast them with the consequences of maintaining unaltered practices. We consider infection risk and likely in-custody deaths, and estimate how within-jail dynamics lead to spill-over risks, not only affecting incarcerated people but increasing exposure, infection, and death rates for both corrections officers and the broader community beyond the justice system. We show that, given a typical jail-community dynamic, operating in a business-as-usual way results in substantial, rapid, and ongoing loss of life. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that large-scale reductions in arrest and speeding of releases are likely to save the lives of incarcerated people, jail staff, and the wider community., (Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.)