A bed bug presented at a conference in Washington, February 2, 2011 (AFP/Archives/Jewel SAMAD)
“There is no resurgence”: the government is trying to reassure in the face of the anxiety caused by reports of bedbugs, reported frantically even in the foreign media which recall that Paris will host the Olympic Games next year.
Blood-sucking insects are used to rooms but metro and train users also fear them, although RATP and SNCF claim not to have found any recently, following reports. To convince the general public, the Minister for Transport asked them to be transparent.
“I asked all operators to publish data on reported cases, proven cases” and “actions” implemented, declared the minister, Clément Beaune, during a press briefing on Wednesday after having brought together transport companies (including air transport), insisting that there was “no increase” in the presence of bedbugs in public transport.
There is a “real concern”, insisted Mr. Beaune, however warning against “fake news”.
The government has scheduled an interministerial meeting on the subject on Friday, which will result in “decisions and directions”, assured government spokesperson Olivier Véran on Wednesday, keen to “respond to the legitimate anxiety of the French”.
At the start of the school year, bedbugs seem to have intruded into every nook and cranny of French people’s daily lives. In discussions on the terrace as in the Paris metro, where no one is surprised to see their neighbors inspect their seats before sitting down.
UGC cinemas tried to reassure people at the beginning of September after some spectators reported on social networks about bedbugs in one of their establishments. They had taken stock of their emergency procedure, committing to triggering it as soon as there was a report from spectators.
Despite the clarification, some spectators have since spoken on social networks of their fear of returning to cinemas…
– General concern –
Disappeared from daily life in the 1950s, these insects which feed on human blood have made a comeback over the past thirty years in developed countries thanks to a more nomadic lifestyle, consumption promoting second-hand purchases and increasing resistance to insecticides.
Nothing indicates a sudden invasion, but the long-term trend is real. Figures revealed in July by the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (ANSES) indicate that in France, more than one in ten households have been affected by bedbugs in recent years. last five years.
“I had it from 2018 until 2020,” confides one of these French women, Myriam Dufrasne, an independent real estate advisor, in Paris. “Several times, I was forced to throw away bedding, clothes, wash them at over 60 degrees, that means my children’s clothes plus my clothes in the laundromats…”
The Aix-en-Provence law faculty decided on Wednesday not to organize classes until Friday in two amphitheaters, attended by some 3,000 students, “as a precaution”, after students claimed to have seen bedbugs.
Before that, at least two infected schools in the south of the country had to temporarily close. In the north, a hospital emergency department had to be relocated a day after outbreaks of bedbugs were discovered.
– “Zero proven cases” –
A mattress contaminated by bedbugs thrown into the street in Marseille, October 3, 2023 (AFP/Nicolas TUCAT)
If these pests arouse such concern, “it is because the problem concerns everyone, regardless of age or social status, rich and poor alike”, estimates Pascal Delaunay, parasitologist and medical entomologist at the University Hospital of Nice (south-east). “Certainly the bedbug does not carry disease, but it is physically and nervously exhausting.”
As for its proliferation in France, “it is a reality that has become difficult to deny. For five to seven years, we have been witnessing an exponential increase in outbreaks of infestation,” continues the specialist.
But the Minister responsible for Transport insists: “There is no increase in cases, no psychosis, no anxiety to be had”.
“In recent weeks, around ten cases have been reported to the RATP (…) all have been verified” and there were “zero proven cases”. At the SNCF, there have been “37 cases” reported “in recent weeks” and, there too, “all verified, zero proven,” he added.
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