A deer tick bite (also known as blacklegged tick) can cause Lyme disease. (Victoria Arocho/Associated Press)

Health officials in Nova Scotia are trying to track down five people who were wrongly told they don’t have Lyme disease.

A lab in Winnipeg made a mistake in test results.

Lyme disease is caused by a bacterium which can be spread through the bite of certain types of ticks.

Early symptoms include a rash at the site of the bite, fatigue, chills, fever, headache, muscle and joint pain and swollen lymph nodes.

Across Canada, 24 people were told they didn’t have the disease when in fact they did—13 of those people are in Nova Scotia.

The province’s chief medical officer of health, Robert Strang, said of those 13, seven were treated anyway—one has begun getting treatment—and officials are now trying to track down the remaining five.

If it goes untreated, Lyme disease, can cause serious neurological damage.

But Strang said even with this delay, those who received the false results shouldn’t worry.

“The testing issue just happened in the last few months, the latter part of 2010, so these would be newer cases that still wouldn’t be into that chronic phase yet, but even in the chronic phase, if it’s identified, and treated with antibiotics, the antibiotics are effective.”

Strang said the health department is working with family doctors to track down those with the false test results.

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