Bedbugs are invading public schools at an alarming rate with 1,700 confirmed cases reported in New York City’s schools alone in the last five months. The figure is on track to triple last year’s total of 1,019 cases in the city. Ick! View footage and find out more info after the jump!
[MDLS] – Â New statistics from the Department of Education appear to show the tiny parasites love the cold weather. Eighty per cent of the cases were reported during November, December and January, NBC reports.
The Department of Education has to record any incidents where an infestation is found, but spokesman Marge Feinberg said the increase in cases is caused by individual students coming to school with bedbugs and not by infestations.
‘It is important to know that schools are not hospitable places for bedbugs,’ Miss Feinberg said. ‘They are brought into schools from the clothing.’
Officials in New York, where there are 1.1 million students and 100,000 teachers, last year admitted the bedbug scourge had reached ‘an unprecedented rate of spread.’ They pledged $500,000 to raise public awareness.
A protocol for dealing with cases was introduced in schools, along with the aim of more communication between schools and parents. Those measures seem to have failed because so many homes are already infested.
Private homes continue to be the source of most infestations, but bedbugs travel on the clothes and bags of their hosts to spead elsewhere.
‘Bedbugs need to be where people are,’ Missy Henrickson, of the National Pest Management Association, told NBC New York. ‘So when you have homes infested with bedbugs, students who live there are bringing them into schools.’
Elio Chiavola, owner of Broklyn-based Metro Bed Bug Dogs, added:’Schools are a major transfer point from one place to another,’ said a Brooklyn-based company that specializes in treating private residences for bed bugs. ‘It’s been a huge problem for schools.’
Miss Feinberg would not reveal the specific schools affected.
