Scabies symptoms:
• Intense itching, a pimple-like itchy rash.
• Found in the wrist, elbow, armpit, webbing between the fingers, nipples, genitals, waist, belt-line and buttocks.
• Burrows are sometimes visible on skin, appear as “tiny raised and crooked grayish-white or skin-colored lines on the skin surface.”
How is it spread?
• Usually is spread by direct, prolonged, skin-to-skin contact with a person who has scabies.
• A quick handshake or hug usually will not spread scabies.
• Easily spread through sexual partners and housemates
• Sometimes spread indirectly by sharing articles such as clothing, towels or bedding used by an infested person
Bedbugs symptoms:
• Range from an absence of any physical signs of the bite, to a small bite mark, to a serious allergic reaction
• Found usually on face, neck, arms or hands
• Usually gone unnoticed until days after bitten
Source: cdc.gov
Editor's note: If you have had trouble with bed bugs or scabies this semester and would be willing to talk to the Daily News about it, please email news@bsudailynews.com.
Bed bugs and scabies outbreaks are back again in the residence halls this year.
Bed bugs cases have been reported in LaFollette Complex and Woodworth Complex. Woodworth has also had reports of scabies.
Matt Kovach, assistant director of Housing and Residence Life, said housing works to fight bed bugs, but a few still slip through.
“Honestly the cases we’ve had have been pretty rare," Kovach said. "I’m not saying we haven’t had them but we do a lot of things preemptively to prevent it from happening. In the summer, we clean all the rooms, we seal our mattresses in hypoallergenic bags. We do what we can."
There were two confirmed cases of bed bugs last year. Kovach wouldn't confirm how many cases there were this year. However, there were at least two cases reported in one weekend in October.
Bed bugs and scabies hide in soft things, like clothing, luggage and bedding, which makes them hard to detect. They aren't considered dangerous, but scabies burrow eggs under the skin and require follow-up treatment, according to cdc.gov.
The procedure in place for a bed bugs or scabies infestation begins by sending the student to the Health Center to diagnose the bite.
“Once the health center has determined it’s not a spider bite or something else, once we know it’s a case of either bedbugs or scabies, we sanitize and heat,” Kovach said.
Pest control will visit a dorm room and set up traps, housing staff will wash all bedding and drapery with a heater left in the room to exterminate and sanitize. Scabies procedure calls for four to six weeks of follow-up treatment.
“Our staff will come in and swap out mattresses," Kovach said. If they can be treated, great. If not, they’ll be disposed of."
Freshman actuarial science major Kathryn Mirabella and freshman public relations major Lindsey Sharp said the location of the bed bugs is concerning.
“Man, I feel like I shouldn’t be sitting here [in Woodworth Commons]. I feel like this is one of the more trafficked food courts, so it’s definitely a little freaky,” Mirabella said.
Sharp said she thinks students living in residence halls should be given instructions on how to look for bed bugs and what to expect.
“Do kids know to go to the Health Center when they have a bug bite?" Sharp said. "I wouldn’t go, I would just think I have a bug bite. When we move in, we should be briefed on this."
Mirabella said she plans to tell her friends about the bed bugs and scabies.
“Now I’m going to go to my friends and say, ‘Hey, be aware,’" she said "Because that’s not something you get in a list of instructions."
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