‘Bedbugs don’t discriminate’: Paris ‘scourge’ sparks fears of international

Paris is burning its luggage and bed linen as it battles a “scourge” of bedbugs, stoking fears of infestation around the world as pest controllers report an uptick in inquiries and transport operators and hoteliers seek to assuage concerns.

The city of light is reportedly under siege from the nocturnal bloodsuckers, leading the French transport minister, Clément Beaune, to meet transport operators. “It’s a real nightmare,” says Yacine, a schoolteacher in Paris who declined to give his surname. “I’m so afraid to take the Métro, I don’t go to the cinema – it’s very alarmant.”

With the city having just hosted Paris fashion week and the Rugby World Cup, bringing hundreds of thousands of visitors to the city, there are mounting fears of the problem spreading as visitors return home with an unwelcome souvenir.

In the UK, Eurostar has sought to reassure travellers that the textile surfaces of its trains are “cleaned thoroughly on a regular basis”, including with heat, and that the presence of insects such as bedbugs is “extremely rare”.

In a statement, it said that trains would be cleaned “on request, or as soon as there is the slightest doubt”. There were also plans for an “preventive treatment across our entire network”, though no further details were given.

Transport for London said it would continue monitoring and “rigorous” cleaning of its networks. The UKHospitality chief executive, Kate Nicholls, said that while the organisation was aware of “reported challenges” in France, “there is absolutely no indication or reports of this happening in the UK”.

But social media has already stoked fears that it may be too late. This week there was a surge in Google searches in the UK for bedbugs, while tensions on the trains and streets are running high. “My friend is on a train from Birmingham to Leicester and she’s just seen a bedbug,” tweeted Londoner Tian-Demi Douglas on Monday. “The whole carriage is screaming. It’s game over, lads. We’re fucked.”

Douglas later said that her friend was planning to take precautionary measures, soaking her shoes in boiling water, washing her clothes at 90C (194F) and even rubbing alcohol over her handbag.

In London in particular, which receives 15 Eurostar trains direct from Paris every day, there is a sense of bracing for impact, and a new undercurrent of threat to every houseguest and fortuitous street find.

“There was a lovely armchair left on the road that I wanted to take, but I didn’t – because of the bugs,” says Izzy Brooks, a recent graduate in south London.

Pest professionals have received an increase in inquiries from Londoners concerned about the coming invasion. David Lodge of Beaver Pest Control has had a 17% increase since last month (and 10% over the past year), while Joseph Terrence of Simply the Pest London says he has received requests from people travelling to Paris, “asking for advice on what to do to protect themselves”.

Among many emails received this week, Blago Manov, the director of Bed Bug Hunters, was contacted by a woman with concerns about her French flatmate.

“I was like: ‘Please don’t worry, just because he’s French,’” he says. “Bedbugs don’t discriminate.”

For those already losing sleep over phantom bites, the experts’ take on the “scourge” reported in Paris may not bring peace: there are just as many bedbugs now as there ever were – and probably much the same number in London and New York.

“The French public is just becoming more aware now,” says Manov.

Daniel Neves, from France but operating in London as Inoculand, says he has not heard of “any massive wave” from his colleagues in Paris. He agreed that knowledge of the problem – and even the pest itself – was generally lower across the Channel.

“When I am in France and attend conferences or speak with people and tell them what I see in London, they show mostly disbelief,” he says. “Some do not have a clue what punaises de lit are … In France, it would be perceived as such an incredible thing to suffer from that it would cause a huge uproar.”

While bedbugs are found wherever there are people in large numbers, major cities periodically experience surges. New York buckled under an “invasion” of bedbugs in 2010,…