The government has been forced to step in to calm an increasingly anxious nation that will host the Olympic Games in just over nine months \u2013 a prime venue for infestations of the crowd-loving insects.<\/p>\n
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The Olympic rings on Trocadero plaza that overlooks the Eiffel Tower in Paris.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>AP<\/cite><\/p>\n Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne called a meeting of ministers for Friday to tackle the bedbug crisis. The country\u2019s transport minister, Clement Beaune, met this week with transportation companies to draw up a plan for monitoring and disinfecting \u2013 and to try to ease what some have called a national psychosis inflamed by the media.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no resurgence of cases,\u201d Beaune said, telling reporters that 37 cases reported in the bus and Metro system and a dozen others on trains proved unfounded \u2013 as did viral videos on social media of tiny creatures supposedly burrowing in the seat of a fast train.<\/p>\n Still, bedbugs have plagued France and other countries for decades. The insects the size of an apple seed that neither jump nor fly get around as easily as people travel from city to city and nation to nation, and they have become increasingly resistant to insecticides. If that\u2019s not enough to make you itchy: bedbugs can stay alive for a year without a meal.<\/p>\n Called the meeting: French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Bloomberg<\/cite><\/p>\n Without any blood, \u201cthey can slow their metabolism and just wait for us,\u201d said Jean-Michel Berenger, an entomologist who raises bedbugs in his lab in the infectious diseases section of the Mediterranee University Hospital in Marseille. The carbon dioxide that all humans give off \u201cwill reactivate them \u2026 and they\u2019ll come back to bite you\u201d.<\/p>\n For now, Berenger said, this much is certain: \u201cBedbugs have infested the media\u201d.<\/p>\n Yet bad dreams are most often fed by a touch of reality.<\/p>\n More than one household in 10 in France was infested with bedbugs between 2017 and 2022, according to a report by the National Agency for Health and Food Safety. The agency relied on a poll by Ipsos to query people on a topic that many prefer to avoid discussing because they fear going public with a bedbug problem will stigmatise them.<\/p>\n But silence is a mistake, experts say. No social category is immune to finding bedbugs in their clothing, blankets or mattresses.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not at all a hygiene problem. The only thing that interests [bedbugs] is your blood,\u201d said Berenger, the entomologist. \u201cWhether you live in a dump or a palace, it\u2019s the same thing to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Pest control technician Lucas Pradalier sprays steam on a bed in a Paris apartment.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>AP<\/cite><\/p>\n Business is booming for companies that eradicate the little brown insects, a process that often starts with detection by dogs trained to sniff out the special odour that bedbugs give off. If an infestation is confirmed, technicians move in to zap the area with super hot steam. Heat and cold are enemies of bedbugs. One French government recommendation for victims is to put well-wrapped clothes in the freezer.<\/p>\n Kevin Le Mestre, director of Lutte Antinuisible, said his company was receiving \u201cdozens and dozens\u201d of calls. In the past, he said, people often didn\u2019t react, even to bites.<\/p>\n A common bedbug is engorged with blood after feeding on a human arm.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>File<\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cNow, as soon as they spot a bite, they don\u2019t ask themselves whether it really comes from bedbugs or not. They call us straight away,\u201d said a pest control technician for the company, Lucas Pradalier, as he disinfected a Paris apartment. A sniffer dog detected bedbugs in a baseboard and between floorboards.<\/p>\n The French public began moving into panic mode about a month ago after reports of bedbugs at a Paris movie theatre. Videos began popping up on social networks, showing little insects on trains and buses.<\/p>\n Now, both Socialists and centrists of President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s party want to propose bills to fight bedbugs. Far-left MP Mathilde Panot recently brought a vial of bedbugs to the parliament to chastise the government for, in her view, letting the creatures run rampant.<\/p>\n Bedbugs, an age-old curse on humans, seemingly disappeared with treatment by harsh, now-banned insecticides. They made a reappearance in the 1950s, especially in densely populated cities like New York. And they travel the world thanks to commerce and tourism.<\/p>\n That adds up to a bedbug challenge for the Paris Olympics starting in July.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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