For years, the nightmare of Paris has been the proliferation of rats. Now the invasion of bed bugs is causing alarm in the French capital, also in cinemas, trains and the subway, to the point that the City Council has asked for urgent help from the Government. There are just three hundred days left until the opening of the Olympic Games and the plague can cause serious image damage.
Bed bugs are a problem throughout France, but the case of Paris is particularly serious because the big sports competition is approaching. The number two of the mayor Anne Hidalgo and probable dolphin, Emmanuel Grégoire, has just sent a letter to the prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, in which he asks for an immediate and energetic action plan “to the height of this plague when the whole of France prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games”.
The Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, has called for next week a crisis meeting to take measures after bedbugs have been detected in seats on the Parisian metro network – specifically line 8 – as well as in convoys the SNCF, the equivalent of Renfe in Spain, including high-speed trains (TGV).
In July, the National Health Security Agency (ANSES) published an exhaustive report of almost three hundred pages dedicated to bed bugs. According to their data, 11% of French households were affected by the plague between 2017 and 2022.
Bed bugs disappeared from everyday life in developed countries in the 1950s. They reappeared in the nineties. This return is explained by several reasons, including the exponential increase in travel and the growing resistance of bed bugs to insecticides. Insects or eggs can hide in clothes and suitcases. Therefore, their mobility is high.
The newspaper Le Parisien dedicated its editorial yesterday to “vampires under the sheets” and pointed out that bed bugs are “the new domestic terror of the French”. The bad news is that it costs a lot to remove them. The good thing, that in principle they do not transmit diseases, unlike ticks and fleas. “In the current state of knowledge, the bed bug is not considered a vector of a pathogenic agent”, assures Anses. When they bite, they cause simple, unimportant, albeit annoying, skin lesions.
Bed bugs, animals that like the night and feed on blood, have lived with humans for millennia. Contrary to popular belief, they are not the result of a lack of hygiene. Interclasses by nature, in Paris they live both in the most popular peripheral neighborhoods and in the elitist 16th arrondissement.
When feeding, bed bugs can absorb up to six times their own weight in blood. Females lay about five eggs a day. This extraordinary fecundity and resistance to insecticides makes it so laborious to eliminate them. A special pest control service for bed bugs can cost, in France, up to 500 euros for an average home. This includes two disinfection sessions, separated by several days. Other alternatives to avoid the toxicity of chemical products is to wash all clothes at more than 60 degrees Celsius or put them in the freezer for 72 hours. The war against bed bugs is arduous and victory can be fleeting. Paris is now on the front lines and time is running out.
