Weeks after a tick bite, he couldn’t speak or move. A slew of tests finally gave him a diagnosis - CNN

John Reagan was enjoying the first few months of retirement when he pulled a tick off his skin in early May.

He didn’t think much about it. Reagan, 66, a retired pharmacist who lives in Concord, New Hampshire, loved being outdoors, often hunting, fishing or going on long walks with his son and daughter’s dogs – aka “the grand-dogs” – in tow.

Reagan fully appreciated the risks of tick bites. Lyme disease is a common infection in the area where he lives. Because it takes about 36 hours for an infected tick to transmit Lyme once it attaches to the skin, he pulled the tiny bloodsucker off almost immediately after returning home and thought he was safe.

A few weeks later, though, he started having flu-like symptoms that included a headache, body aches, a fever, nausea and diarrhea. He visited a local emergency room in mid-May, but doctors couldn’t zero in on a cause, so they sent him home after giving him fluids and anti-nausea medications. Still, he got worse.

His wife thought he might have been having a stroke. Back at the hospital, he lost his ability to speak, move or even open his eyes. Still, tests were negative. His family asked whether this could be related to Reagan’s tick bite a few weeks earlier. They were told no.

Reagan was transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where staff ran a slew of tests, including ones checking for tickborne illnesses. They sent a blood sample to a specialized lab at the Mayo Clinic.

On June 9, his family got a diagnosis: Powassan virus, a rare and serious infection that he almost certainly caught from the all-but-forgotten tick. Unlike Lyme, Powassan virus can pass from a tick to a person in about 15 minutes. Before that moment, they’d never heard of it.

Ticks and the diseases they carry are becoming more common in the United States. In the US, about 90% of all illnesses that are caused by a bite – including mosquitoes – are caused by ticks.

Lyme disease is on the rise but is already the most common tickborne disease, with nearly half a million cases each year, according to CDC estimates. Other growing tickborne threats include alpha-gal syndrome, an allergy to meat and other animal products that can be caused by the bite of lone star ticks.

Powassan virus disease is incredibly rare, with fewer than 100 cases diagnosed and reported in the United States each year, according to the CDC. But in recent years, this number too has been growing as the populations of ticks that carry it have increased.

“There are more ticks in more places,” said Dr. Stephen Rich, a microbiologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who runs TickReport, a tick-testing service the public can use to determine whether the tick that bit them is carrying something that could make a person sick. “Whenever you have more of something, more of the vectors, you’re inevitably going to have more of the pathogens.”

Tickborne diseases are on the rise

In 2025, 76 human cases of Powassan virus disease were reported in the US, an all-time high. Ten of these were fatal.

The virus was first identified by Canadian scientists in the 1950s. A child who had been hunting woodchucks with his father came down with a severe illness that resulted in brain swelling. The boy died, and the virus was ultimately isolated from his brain and named after the town in Ontario where the family lived.

Powassan virus is carried by blacklegged or deer ticks, the same species that carries Lyme disease. It’s an orthoflavivirus, part of the same family as West Nile and Zika.

About 1 in 10 cases are fatal. For those who survive, disability is common: About half of patients have long-term complications.

After living through the past months of fear and uncertainty of not knowing whether they would ever get their dad back, Reagan’s family is eager to make people aware of how serious Powassan virus can be.

Because there’s no specific treatment, the only way to protect people is to urge them to be aware of the disease and take steps to prevent tick bites in the first place, said John’s son, Jeff Reagan.

“Advocate for yourself or your loved ones if they’ve been bitten by a tick recently,” he said. “Because not all medical professionals are familiar with Powassan.”

After a close call, months of recovery