West London Ealing Central Library closed for four days on 1 November, 2023, after bedbugs were found in the furnishings.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said they are disinfesting the Tube train furnishings daily to avoid an outbreak.
Dan Egg, a 32-year-old Master’s degree student in journalism at the University of London, dubbed a bedbug Halloween robe in the Tube which he posted on Twitter to add to the mood.
Bedbug, Cimex lectularius, feeds on human blood and leaves itchy swellings on the skin.
It is a wingless, nocturnal insect with fast cursorial legs and can grow up to 7 millimetres long.
Bedbugs are usually associated with people in congested places with poor hygiene all over the world.
ANSES, the French health and safety agency, says one-tenth of all French households are believed to have had a bedbug problem in the past five years.
DDT, the banned pesticide, controlled them well. They are however, known to be resistant to many modern insecticides.
They can survive without feeding for 20 to 400 days especially in low temperatures.
Bedbugs are not known to cause any disease, but they cause great discomfort to people and induce many allergic reactions.
They reproduce quickly and hide in mattresses, crevices in households and clothing.
They exude a pungent smell and trained sniffer dogs can easily identify their presence in clothing and furnishing.
To control an infestation, a professional pest control operation is necessary, which often needs to be repeated.
The pests have been recently spotted in the metro, high-speed trains and at Paris’s Charles-de-Gaulle Airport in France.
This has created fears among other neighbouring countries like UK, amidst concerns of an impending infestation.
There are reports of sightings by the social media in public transport, cinemas and hospitals in Paris.
There are also reported cases in as many as 17 educational institutions, and seven of them were closed for fumigation.
France is hosting the Rugby World Cup and preparing to host the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.
The government of France is concerned that the image of their country is being damaged, and that tourism could suffer, especially during the Olympics.
Some social media reports have named Paris as the city of bites, no more the city of light, as it is known.
