The invisible plague hides on the subway and in cinema seats.
Now commuters don’t dare to sit down and trains have been taken out of service.
– It is hell for those affected, says Emmanuel Grégoire, deputy mayor of Paris.
Bedbugs have taken over the French capital.
That is the meaning of the alarm from local authorities in Paris, who are now appealing to the government to establish a crisis force to stop the “invasion”.
Panicked commuters have shared pictures and videos of the plague from the city’s subway and commuter trains as well as from Charles de Gaulle airport on social media.
Don’t dare sit down
Many no longer dare to sit down for fear of bringing lice home.
The insects have also been discovered in cinemas in Paris.
– No one is safe. You can hit them everywhere and bring them home. And you don’t discover it until they have multiplied and spread,” says Grégoire on French television.
– It is hell for those affected.
He states that more and more people contact the authorities and plead for help after being affected by the insects in their homes.
Transport Minister Clément Beaune has now summoned representatives of public transport to “inform about countermeasures and how travelers can be protected”, writes The Guardian.
Took trains out of traffic
Fears increased during the week when a subway driver on line 8 of the Paris Métro raised the alarm that he had seen bedbugs in the carriage. The entire train was taken out of service to be cleaned.
The train operators in the capital have tried to reassure travelers by ensuring that carriages and seats are regularly cleaned to prevent the lice from taking hold.
But it hasn’t helped.
During Friday, the daily newspaper Le Parisien had a large published article about the panic in the capital, where they called the scourge “a kind of domestic terrorism”.
Mathilde Panot, party leader of the French left-wing party Indomitable France, says on French radio that lice “have created hell for millions of people in this country” and that the government must act.
– It is a sanitary problem, but it also creates mental illness with people who cannot sleep, are traumatized and are forced to take antidepressants, she says.
Many French affected
Problems with lice have increased in recent years after almost disappearing in the 1950s following active control.
According to the French public health authority, around 11 percent of French homes have been affected since 2017.
Bed bugs often cause insomnia, anxiety and depression in those affected, writes The Guardian.
During the day, bed bugs hide in crevices in bed bases and furniture and are difficult to detect. During the night they come out and look for people they can suck blood from.
Keep track of the flea market find
The bites cause pain and itching and are often detected by traces of blood in the bed.
If you are affected by lice, you should contact a cleaning company.
In Sweden, bed bugs are not as common as in France, but you should be careful here as well.
– If you buy an old piece of furniture, for example a bed, you should look carefully before and check for traces of bedbugs in seams and joints, says Joakim Olsson, regional manager at Anticimex in Mälardalen, to Home & Rent.