Skift Take
Insects at the airport and on commuter hotels is absolutely lot an excellent look heading into the Paris Olympics next year.
Newscred
With the Paris Olympics less than a year away, French authorities want to make sure the bedbugs do not bite during the games and have begun a drive to exterminate the pests.
Social network users have been publishing video of the pests crawling around in high-speed trains and the Paris city, together with a rash of online short articles about vermins in movie theaters and even Charles de Gaulle airport.
The reports have reached the greatest levels of federal government.
“The state urgently requires to put an action strategy in location versus this scourge as France is preparing to welcome the Olympic and Paralympic games in 2024,” the capital’s deputy mayor, Emmanuel Gregoire, said in a letter to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne today.
Transportation Minister Clement Beaune said on Friday he will go over the problem with transport operators next week.
At the Paris Gare de Lyon train station, travellers said they doubted whether authorities would be able to get on top of the issue.
“I’m worried about it. I’ll keep my luggage near stop (insects) entering my home. Once I get home, I’ll have to wash all my clothes,” Laura Mmadi, a sales worker heading to the south of France said.
Coming into Paris from Nice, Sophie Ruscica said she had actually examined her seat carefully for any signs of the pests that feed upon human blood and can live in a vast array of environments in addition to beds.
“It stressed me out. I needed to take the train and I wondered whether I would find insects. But then again, one can discover them in cinemas and just about everywhere,” she said.
In a report published in July, health agency Anses said that between 2017 and 2022, vermins had infested more than one in 10 French households.
“Everyone is panicking,” pest control store manager Sacha Krief said. “People can really get depressed, even paranoid over it.”
Deputy mayor Gregoire called on insurers to include insect cover in home insurance plan, as low-income people hardly ever had the means to hire pest control companies.
(Reporting by Antony Paone and Geert De Clercq; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
This article was composed by Geert De Clercq and Antony Paone from Reuters and was lawfully accredited through the DiveMarketplace by Market Dive. Please direct all licensing questions to [email secured]
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