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Every year, hordes of tourists flock to Paris with a list of worries: pickpockets, high hotel prices, how to get skip-the-line tickets and how to most politely 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, another problem has caught the attention of government officials: bed bugs. Many of them.
Apparent footage of the insects went viral on social media platforms such as TikTok, prompting some users to post videos of themselves on the subway rather than occupying a vacant space or warning of infestations in their Airbnbs. Social media posts appeared to show bed bugs on the subway and public buses. One showed bed bug bites all over a person’s body, supposedly after going to the movies.
Paris Deputy Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire wrote a letter to Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne last week calling for solutions to the bed bug problem, local media reported. “The state must urgently put in place an action plan against this scourge as France prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2024,” Grégoire wrote, according to French television news channel TF1 Info.
The deputy mayor also tried to reassure the public on social media, but still made it clear: “No one is safe” from an infestation, he said said.
French Transport Minister Clément Beaune wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitterthat he planned to meet with carriers to discuss the issue.
According to a recent survey by the French health authority ANSES, between 2017 and 2022, around one in ten French households was infested with bed bugs. This warned that infestations were increasing due to an increase in travel and increasing resistance to pesticides.
“Bed bugs are a costly nuisance for households in metropolitan France, considering the treatment costs and psychological impact,” the agency wrote in its report. Bed bugs are not known to transmit disease when they bite people, but they have been linked to a lower quality of life, sleep disorders and mental health problems.
This is how pest experts look for bed bugs in hotels
Local media also reported sightings of bed bugs and cockroaches on public transport in Marseille, France’s second largest city. One resident told news channel BFM TV that she undresses on her balcony before entering her house to keep the pests away.
Last week, a student captured footage of what appeared to be bed bugs on a high-speed train linking the city with Paris – small brown insects contrasted with blue-and-white striped chairs, clearly visible in daylight.
“Everyone looked at their seats and looked at their skin to see if they had been bitten by a bug,” he said in a video interview translated by Le Parisien. “It was very anxiety provoking.”