Home World Bedbugs in Paris and Marseille raise concern ahead of 2024 Olympics

Bedbugs in Paris and Marseille raise concern ahead of 2024 Olympics

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Every year, hordes of tourists come to Paris with a short list of concerns: pickpockets, exorbitant hotel prices, how to get skip-the-line tickets, and the most polite way to decline a stranger’s offer of a friendship bracelet outside the Sacré-Coeur.

But as the French capital prepares to welcome… Millions of visitors For the 2024 Summer Olympics, a different issue has caught the attention of government officials: bed bugs. A lot of them.

Clear shots of the insects spread on social media Like Tik TokWhich prompted some users to post their own videos Standing on the metro Instead of taking an open seat or Injury warning In their Airbnbs. Posts on social media showed the presence of bed bugs on the subway and on public buses. One of them showed bedbug bites all over the person’s body, after visiting a movie theater.

Paris’s deputy mayor, Emmanuel Gregoire, wrote a letter last week to Prime Minister Elisabeth Bourne calling for solutions to the bedbug problem, local media reported. “The country urgently needs to develop an action plan against this scourge as France prepares to welcome the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024,” Gregoire wrote, according to a French television news channel. TF1 information.

The deputy mayor also tried to reassure the public on social media, but still made clear his warning: “No one is safe” from infection, he said. He said.

French Minister of Transport Clement Beaune He wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as TwitterHe intends to meet with transport operators to discuss this issue.

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One in 10 French households was infested with bedbugs between 2017 and 2022, according to a recent study. Recent study From the French health agency ANSES, which warned that infections are on the rise due to increased travel and increased resistance to insecticides.

“Bedbugs represent a costly nuisance for families in metropolitan France, given the cost of treatment and the psychological impact,” the agency wrote in its report. She added that bed bugs are not known to transmit diseases when they bite humans, but they are associated with reduced quality of life, sleep disorders and mental health problems.

How to look for bed bugs in hotels, according to pest experts

Local media too mentioned Bedbug and cockroach sightings On public transportation In Marseille, France’s second-most populous city, a resident told the news network BFM TV She takes off her clothes on her balcony before entering her home in an attempt to keep pests away.

Last week, a university student captured footage of what appeared to be bedbugs on a high-speed train line connecting the city to Paris — small brown insects that contrast with the blue-and-white-striped chairs and are easily visible in broad daylight.

“Everyone looked at their seats and looked at their skin to see if they had been bitten by a bedbug,” he said in a video interview, which I translated. Parisian. “It was very worrying.”

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