Tick-borne disease surveillance: About: Vector-borne disease surveillance in Canada

About tick‑borne disease surveillance

On this page

• Human Surveillance
  • Lyme disease enhanced surveillance
  • Tick‑borne diseases surveillance system
• Non‑human surveillance
• Lyme disease risk map
• Established tick population projection map
• Data limitations
• Acronyms
• Acknowledgements and suggested citation
• Related links

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) works with provincial and territorial partners to monitor tick‑borne diseases across the country. Surveillance uses a One Health approach, integrating human case data with information from ticks and the environment.

Human surveillance

A tick-borne disease (TBD) is a type of vector-borne disease (VBD) caused by pathogens such as parasites, viruses, or bacteria and transmitted by infected ticks. Currently, four tick-borne diseases are nationally notifiable in Canada including Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, babesiosis and Powassan virus disease. Provinces and territories voluntarily report cases to PHAC using national case definitions.

Lyme Disease Enhanced Surveillance (LDES)

• Lyme disease has been nationally notifiable since 2009.
• All jurisdictions report information about cases through the Canadian Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (CNDSS), which includes age, sex/gender, and case classification (probable or confirmed).
• The LDES system, implemented in 2011, collects additional information not captured through CNDSS.
• Additional variables include probable geographic location of infection, clinical features, and laboratory information.
• Data from LDES and CNDSS support risk assessments, prevention messaging, and public health actions.
• LDES operates under the federal–provincial–territorial Multi‑Lateral Information Sharing Agreement.

Data sources: LDES

• Participation has fluctuated over time but as of 2023, seven provinces participate in LDES and submit annual data to PHAC directly.
• Other provinces and territories provide limited demographic and case classification data through CNDSS.

Tick-borne disease surveillance system (TBDSS)

• In 2024, PHAC launched the TBDSS, which includes, anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and Powassan virus disease in addition to Lyme disease.
• Provinces and territories provide limited demographic and case classification information to support national trend monitoring.

Data sources: TBDSS

• Provincial and territorial authorities collect and submit annual data to PHAC
• For babesiosis, Canadian Blood Services and Héma‑Québec screen blood donations during spring, summer, and fall. Positive donors are reported to provincial and territorial public health authorities, who follow up and report cases to PHAC.

Non‑Human Surveillance

Tick Surveillance

PHAC complements human surveillance with tick (vector) surveillance, a key component of the One Health approach.

Two types of surveillance are used:

• Passive surveillance — Ticks or their images collected from people or pets that healthcare professionals, veterinarians or the public submit voluntarily. Passive surveillance signals where emerging tick populations may be establishing and helps guide active surveillance.
• Active surveillance — Ticks collected from their natural habitat using field study methods such as dragging a piece of fabric along the ground (drag sampling). Ticks collected are identified to the species level at the laboratory and tested for detecting tick-borne pathogens. This active surveillance allows identifying where Lyme disease and other tick-borne disease risks exist.

Identifying TBD risk areas helps:

• Target prevention and control measures before human cases occur;
• Support classification of human cases; and
• Support early diagnosis and treatment.

Data sources: Tick Surveillance

• Passive surveillance:
  • From 1991–2021, provinces and territories used a sample‑based system (i.e., submitting the tick for identification and testing).
  • Since 2021, data from eTick are integrated into PHAC’s surveillance system. eTick is an electronic platform managed by Bishop’s University collecting photos of ticks found on humans, domestic animals, and in the environment.
• Active surveillance:
  • May be conducted by federal or provincial public health organizations and university partners.
  • In some provinces, active surveillance is conducted by local health units.
  • Those datasets may be integrated into PHAC’s tick surveillance system.

Risk Maps

• Lyme disease risk areas map — Shows areas where people are most at risk of Lyme disease.
• Established tick population prediction map — Displays past, current, and projected future distributions of tick populations under various climate scenarios.

Data sources: Risk Maps

• Lyme disease risk areas map:
  Developed using tick surveillance data and reported Lyme disease cases, in collaboration with provincial and territorial partners.
• Established tick population prediction map:
  Based on mathematical modelling that integrates climate change scenario data with tick survival and reproduction parameters from laboratory and field studies.

Tick‑borne diseases: data definitions and notes

Data Limitations

Annual case numbers may fluctuate due to:

• Underreporting
• Public health prevention efforts
• Weather variations affecting tick activity
• Changes in healthcare‑seeking or outdoor activity (e.g., during the COVID‑19 pandemic)

Additional limitations:

• Surveillance practices vary across jurisdictions, affecting the proportion of confirmed vs. probable cases.
• Dashboard data may differ from provincial/territorial reporting due to updates not yet reflected in national datasets.

Acronyms

• CNDSS — Canadian Notifiable Disease Surveillance System
• LDES — Lyme Disease Enhanced Surveillance
• PHAC — Public Health Agency of Canada

Acknowledgements and suggested citation

This dashboard is a collaboration between local, provincial, and territorial public health data providers.

Suggested citation:
Vector‑borne disease surveillance in Canada. Ottawa, Canada: Public Health Agency of Canada.
https://health-infobase.canada.ca/zoonoses/tick

Related links

Government of Canada

• Lyme Disease
• Multi-lateral information sharing agreement

Provincial, territorial and international surveillance

• British Columbia – Lyme Disease
• Alberta – Lyme Disease
• Saskatchewan – Lyme Disease
• Manitoba – Lyme Disease
• Ontario – Lyme Disease
• Québec – Lyme Disease
• Nova Scotia – Lyme Disease
• New Brunswick – Lyme Disease
• Prince Edward Island – Lyme Disease
• Newfoundland and Labrador – Lyme Disease
• U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – Lyme Disease
• European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control – Lyme Disease

About this dashboard

The Tick-borne disease surveillance Infobase dashboard includes:

• Annual reports tab:
  This tab summarizes the most recent annual data available for nationally notifiable tick‑borne diseases, including Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and Powassan virus disease.
• Explore the data tab:
  This section offers a suite of interactive tools and visualizations to help users explore, human case trends over time, geographic patterns of disease occurrence and tick surveillance results.

How to interact with the visualizations

Depending on the visualization, there may be different options for interacting, including:

• Drop-down menus to select which information to display
• Hover over fields for the individual data points in the maps to display specific information relative to that location
• Hover over elements of the graphs to display data in the legend
• An option to export data

The visualizations also include additional details and descriptions of methods and limitations (in text descriptions and notes), to help interpret the data.