A COMMUTER has revealed their disturbing trip on the London Underground amid fears of a bedbug invasion.
The commuter rode the Victoria Line from Brixton to Walthamstow in the middle of the day to see if they could find any bedbugs.
TikTok/@lassogoldA Bedbug was spotted by one rider on the Victoria Tube Line[/caption]
tiktok/@_.c.boogieMore bedbugs are spotted on London buses as commuters refuse to sit down over invasion fears[/caption]
AlamyA bedbug feeding on human skin leaves red, itchy marks[/caption]
The search comes after Paris has been hit with a plague of the insects and fears are growing that the “super bed bugs” have jumped the Channel and are now running rampant in the UK.
The commuter found the usual dirtiness of the Tube: dirty seats, gross human behaviour, and fruit peels: satsuma.
But, after searching through the train carriages and looking over the bright blue seats, there were no bedbugs, which are nocturnal animals.
Workers the commuter spoke to on the line were still terrified by the potential invasion.
At one stop’s snack kiosk was Pritesh Patel – with the 56-year-old revealing his daughter has insisted that he must change his clothes and have a wash when he arrives back home as she fears him bringing the insects back.
Mr Patel said: “My daughter came back from work a couple of days ago and as a joke said whenever I come home now I have to change my clothes and have a wash.
“She uses the Victoria line and she can’t sit down because she had this thought that bed bugs were being transported here by people on holiday. This never happened once when we had Covid.”
Mr Patel added: “I’m not concerned about it. It’s something that I suppose can travel a little bit. Maybe the hot weather has something to do with it, it might increase their lifecycle.”
A customer service advisor at the station said: “I’m concerned, you know? I’m actually quite scared because I’ve been through a bedbug crisis before and they’re not nice them things.
“When I used to live with my mum, I was going out with this boy. His brother lived in the house as well and his bed broke. Then someone [in the street] threw out a mattress.
“He [the brother] brought it into the house and the whole house got infested. I transferred it to my mum’s house. It was a madness we had to throw everything out.”
Airlines and hotels across the UK are bracing for an invasion of “super-bedbugs” from Paris, where they have run rampant.
Grim clips from the French capital show the blood-sucking bugs crawling across hotel bedsheets, cafe tables and Metro carriages.
One major hotel UK chain is quizzing guests about whether they have come from France.
In recent days a woman posted a photo of what was thought to be a bedbug on a Tube in the capital.
Others have now taken to TikTok with skin-crawling clips of bugs on other Underground lines and buses.
How to spot a bedbug
According to the NHS, bedbugs can be dark yellow, red or brown.
The critters are oval shaped and are around the size of an apple seed.
As an insect they have six legs and two antenna.
You can identify adult bedbugs by their size as they are around 5mm long and there will be spots from their waste like little ink splats.
The adult pesky pests do have the vestiges of wings called wing pads, but they do not fully develop into functional wings, therefore they cannot fly.
Bedbugs can look somewhat different depending on
their feeding status.
After they have fed, bedbugs bodies will swell and turn a reddish colour from their latest meal.
And Luton Council this week issued a warning to residents it was receiving an ‘alarming’ number of bed bug jobs.
Another holidaymaker who was left with 200 bites has warned about how the bites had scarred her.
Sharon Haslam, 65, said the insects had left a “big red” blotch on her face and arms and now fears the blemishes may “never go away”.
She fled the Calypso Hotel, in Blackpool, Lancs., last month with her pal Marian Pearson, 60, after they woke up to find themselves covered in an itchy rash.
“We are on four weeks already, and I’ve still got a big red mark on my face, under my eye. And in total honesty, it’s made me paranoid.
“If I get up to go to the toilet in the night, normally I would just go to the loo with the light off. Now I will turn the lights on and check the bed.”
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has said he understands that the prospect of bed bugs arriving in the city is a ‘real source of concern’ for locals, and TfL says it is disinfecting its Tube services every day in an effort to stave them off.
Twitter/@mirxclealignerA bedbug was seen crawling on a bus window in Manchester[/caption]
GettyBedbugs can leave hundreds of the bites on a victim’s skin[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
