Mysterious bug bites have been reported in a specific county in Virginia and health officials are trying to understand what insect is causing these bites, UPI reported.
Residents from Arlington County said that they thought they were just being bitten by a mosquito but figured afterwards that the bumps swelled and turned into a larger size. “It started to grow and it swelled, and then I was at work one day and I noticed that it was blistering,” resident Morgan Dailey said to WRC-TV.
The Arlington County Health Department hasn’t yet identified what insect species are causing the bites but a health department spokesman said in an interview with WJLA-TV that they believe that “the leading suspect at this point is something called a pyemote, which is a type of mite that likes to feed on cicada eggs, so they must be very happy with their food supply at the moment,” health department spokesman told WJLA-TV.
Although pyemote bites are not dangerous nor life-threatening, the health department said that if are left untreated or scratched, bites could become infected.
