It was hard to miss the direheadlines: bed bugs were reportedly all over Paris during the city’s Fashion Week, from the metro to a high-end restaurant. As fashionistas made their way home—and in light of the fact that Paris has been preparing to host the Olympics next summer—people asked, why did this happen all of a sudden? Why did it occur here? And are we headed for more outbreaks worldwide?
The situation echoes another bed bug resurgence from more than a decade ago—in particular, in New York City—when the pests made daily headlines for popping up in hotels, apartment complexes, movie theaters, subways, and more. “It feels a lot like 2010 in the U.S. all over again,” says Richard Cooper, a pest control expert at R. Cooper Consulting and a research associate in the Urban Entomology Lab at Rutgers University.
While Paris Fashion Week may mark the first major bedbug headlines since then, Cooper isn’t convinced that this is a resurgence: “I think a lot of it is probably getting hyped up,” he says. Other experts agree. “It has the media excited, but in all honesty, these populations don’t develop just overnight,” says Dini Miller, a professor and urban pest management specialist at Virginia Tech. “This is just getting attention again. And I promise these bed bugs have been there for a while.”
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Bed bugs are pests that feed mainly on humans; their preferred meal is our blood, and they congregate in places where their food is as easy to get as possible. They particularly like to hunker down anywhere near where people sleep, such as in mattresses, furniture and baseboards. Bed bugs have lived with humans for millennia, and although their numbers may have waxed and waned over that time, they’ve never truly disappeared.
So what made the recent Paris sightings big news? According to both Cooper and Miller, in some cases, bed bug infestations may have decreased during the COVID pandemic. After all, the insects often move around by hitching a ride when people travel and socialize. During the pandemic, many people were in lockdown or practicing social distancing. “I think the pandemic really crashed the spread of bed bugs,” Cooper says. Even passing the insects between apartments within a single building was unlikely, he says, because people weren’t mingling with their neighbors.
With the world opening back up over the past couple of years, the Paris cases are right on schedule, Cooper adds. “I always thought it was going to be about a two- to three-year lag from when we started traveling again,” he says.
Bed bugs may not have been spreading a lot during the pandemic, but deep reservoirs of them were still thriving worldwide. Although the pests can affect anyone across the socioeconomic spectrum, the worst infestations often strike people living in poverty, as well as older or disabled people. These are the groups of people who have continued to suffer from infestations despite the pandemic, both Cooper and Miller note. It’s expensive to treat a bedbug infestation—and to keep up on high-quality pest control in general, which can involve regular application of chemicals and other products, along with inspections. Getting rid of the pests is also physically demanding: once you have an infestation, you need to wash all of your laundry and bedding on high heat, inspect and treat furniture, and more. It’s hard, expensive labor.
“Let’s say the middle class and above will pay whatever it takes to get rid of [bed bugs in] their home. And if they’re not traveling, and their kids aren’t sleeping over at other people’s houses, then, yes, we did see a decline in that situation,” Miller says of the pandemic trends. “But one of the upticks that became very, very apparent was with elderly and disabled people.”
So now that people who can afford it are traveling more—say, for Fashion Week and the Olympics—will there be a new surge?
“I don’t think we’ll ever see what we saw in the first go-round with the resurgence,” Cooper says, referencing the outbreaks in the 2010s. “I think there are too many people who are aware of bed bugs now.” In that earlier case, he adds, there was close to a 10-year period “where people weren’t very aware, which gave the bed bugs a chance to spread pretty much unbridled.”
Cooper emphasizes that the chances of travelers in Paris actually sparking an outbreak elsewhere are slim to none. The likelihood that a specific hotel has some bed bugs in it is fairly high, he says, but the numbers are still low overall. The chances that the insects are in your room, specifically, are even lower, and the chances that you’ll bring enough of them home to actually start an infestation are lower still. (You’d have to either bring home both a mature male and female or a female that just happened to be pregnant.)
To avoid even that slim chance, there are relatively simple steps anyone can take to avoid bed bugs. First of all, remember that the insects and their eggs are visible to the human eye. Any time you enter a hotel room, take a look along the seams of the mattress and edges of the headboard to look for an infestation. Classic signs: bed bug feces, which appear as small black splatters; eggs, which look like miniature grains of rice; and actual bed bugs, which are about the size of a lentil and dark reddish brown, with a flat body if they haven’t fed or a bloated one if they have. If you see signs of the insects, leave that room immediately.
When departing from a hotel (whether you’ve spotted bed bugs or not), check your baggage and clothing. Miller suggests using a sticky lint roller. “Just roll that over yourself,” she says. If you don’t see any bed bugs or eggs, “then there is nothing there.”
Once you are home, wash all of the clothes that can withstand it on high heat and dry them on high for about 20 minutes. For more delicate clothes, try a steamer. And for other fabrics, simply inspect them carefully. Luggage can also be steamed or placed in special heat boxes that are available for the sole purpose of killing errant bed bugs.
And don’t pay attention to the hype. “Realize that bed bugs are an issue that we’re going to be living with for quite some time,” Miller says. “When they end up in the media, it’s because people start paying attention to them again.”