Bedbugs also found in a Lille school

It looks like the pests have decided to travel out of Paris and conquer some new territory

As if it wasn’t bad enough that the City of Paris is in the full grip of bedbug infestation and accompanying anxiety, reports came out of Lille yesterday that these insects have been found there, too.

Apparently, on Tuesday afternoon, three of the classrooms in the Cornette school in the Lille district of Fives were found to contain bedbugs.

The reaction of the Lille City Hall was swift. The authorities immediately notified the media that they had commissioned a specialist pest control company to diagnose and treat the educational facilities today so that students would be able to return to class on Thursday.

Classes will go on

The preliminary inspection showed no signs of infestation in the other two rooms of the school or in the other two nearby schools where the pest control carried out preventative control.

For the affected classrooms at the Cornette school, an intervention is planned during which “mechanical and steam treatment will be applied” before a new inspection during the day, according to the press release. One classroom will remain inaccessible for several days, though.

Nevertheless, the plan is to have the educational process continue uninterrupted. Parents of the pupils were informed about the situation by email.

In addition, Ilevia, the Lille Metropole public transport operator, announced that it had carried out a scheduled disinfection of trams and busses and that in the coming days, it will also perform the same operation in the local metro.

The press release of the company was necessitated after a TikTok video went viral on Sunday, showing a bug of an unidentified species in one of the metro trains.

Ilevia has assured that there is no need to worry anyway because the Lille metro “has the advantage of not having textile seats and coverings which we know are conducive to the proliferation of these insects".