ORONO, Maine (AP) - U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is coming to the state’s flagship public university to conduct a field hearing on the rising toll of Lyme disease.

Collins says annual cases of the tick-borne infection have nearly doubled since 2010. She’s conducting the hearing at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Diagnostic and Research Laboratory Tick Lab in Orono on Thursday.

Collins, a Republican, says Maine has the highest rate of Lyme disease in the country, as per capita diagnoses are 10 times higher than the national average. Thursday’s hearing is scheduled to include numerous expert witnesses, including Lyle Petersen, who is director of the division of vector-borne diseases at the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, an arm of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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