Category Archives: Bed Bugs North Carolina

Bed Bug Hotel and Apartment Reports. Click on the city below to find our latest bed bug reports in North Carolina on hotels. To report a new bed bug incident, navigate to our city page below to see further details.

Recommended tips after hotel check-in: 1. Pick up the mattresses in the rooms and look under it. Check around the edges of the box springs. 2. Check under the box spring. 3. Lift up each headboard an lay it on the bed. Carefully inspect the hole where the headboard was lifted out of. Also, inspect all niches and corners of the headboard. 4. If you decide to stay in the hotel, do not put any clothes in dressers. Keep them in your luggage and your dirty clothes in plastic bags.

Happened in June 30-July 3rd, saw a bed bug on abdomen upon leaving the room on July 1st but thought I could have picked it up anywhere. After sleeping July 2nd into the 3rd, woke up scratching everyw...

I traveled to Charlotte on 6/11/2020 through 6/14/2020. I stayed at Hyatt Place Arrowood. The first night I slept in the bed and woke up with bite marks, I thought it was just the bugs in North Caroli...

Bed bugs found on 5/3/20 Found bed bugs in my room, staff treated the situation like it was no big deal, horrible customer service ...

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North Carolina Bed Bug Hotel and Apartment Reports ...

New study says that bed bugs can modify microbial communities in homes they infest, an advance that could lead to better indoor environmental quality (IEQ).

Homes infested by bed bugs appear to have different bacterial communitiesoften referred to as microbiomethan homes without bed bugs, according to a first-of-its-kind study from North Carolina State University.

In addition, once bed bug infestations were eradicated, home microbiome became more similar to those in homes that never had bed bugs.

According to American health agency CDC, Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) refers to the quality of a buildings environment in relation to the health and wellbeing of those who occupy space within it. IEQ is determined by many factors, including lighting, air quality, and damp conditions.

Microbes can affect indoor air quality. So NC State entomologists Coby Schal and Madhavi Kakumanu wanted to learn more about the microbiome of bed bugs, whether bed bugs can shape the microbial community in homes they infest, and whether eliminating bed bugs changes the microbiome of homes that were once infested.

The study, held in an apartment complex in Raleigh, compared the microbiome of bed bugs with the microbiome in the household dust of infested homes as well as the microbiome in apartments that had no bed bugs. Nineteen infested homes were studied over the course of four months; seven were treated with heat to eliminate bed bugs after the initial sample was taken, while 12 infested homes were treated after one month. These homes were compared with 11 homes that had no bed bugs.

The results showed similarities between the microbiome of bed bugs and the dust-associated microbiome of infested homes, mostly through the presence of Wolbachia, a symbiotic bacterium that comprises the majority of the bacterial abundance in bed bugs. Bed bug and infested home microbiome differed significantly from the microbial communities of uninfested homes.

"There is a link between the microbiome of bed bugs and the microbiome of household dust in bed bug infested homes," said Schal, the Blanton J. Whitmire Distinguished Professor of Entomology at NC State and co-corresponding author of the paper. "No previous study has reported the impact of chronic pest infestations on indoor microbial diversity."

The study also showed that, after bed bugs were eliminated, infested home microbiome gradually became more like those in homes without bed bugs.

"The elimination of the bed bugs resulted in gradual shifts in the home microbial communities toward those of uninfested homes," Kakumanu, an NC State research scholar in Schal's lab and co-corresponding author of the study, said. "This paper is the first experimental demonstration that eliminating an indoor pest alters the indoor microbiome toward that of uninfested homes."

"Bed bug infestations are problematic in many homes in both developed and developing countries," Schal said. "There is a critical need to investigate infestations from the perspective of indoor environmental quality, and this paper represents a first step toward this end."

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Bed bugs modify microbial diversity of homes they infest - THE WEEK

Four long-term care facilities with sizable outbreaks have had issues in the past, according to recent state inspections.

Carolina Public Press

Four North Carolina long-term care facilities with substantial outbreaks of the new coronavirus have a recent history of deficiencies in inspections, according to state records.

State health officials on Wednesday reported outbreaks of two or more cases in at least 20 long-term care facilities. Carolina Public Press asked the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday for a list of the names of facilities with outbreaks and the number of cases, but as of Thursday morning, DHHS has neither acknowledged nor complied with this request.

However, CPP has gathered information about four of the larger outbreaks of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, at long-term care facilities and in each case reviewed their recent reports.

Cherry Springs Village, an adult care home in Henderson County, has at least 23 confirmed cases of coronavirus infection, a spokesperson for the residence has acknowledged. Cherry Springs Village also received citations for multiple problems, including one in November 2019 for failure to control vermin, in this case bedbugs.

Pine Forest Rest Home, an adult care home in Northampton County, has at least 30 confirmed cases of COVID-19, a spokesperson for the Northampton County Health Department told CPP on Tuesday. Last year North Carolina inspectors cited the facility for multiple problems, including failure to follow CDC guidelines to prevent infection.

Pinehurst Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center, a nursing home in Moore County, has at least 30 confirmed cases, the county Health Department said Wednesday. Federal inspections over the last year show the facility has been cited for multiple problems with tracking patient care and handling CPAP breathing devices for patients with severe respiratory problems.

PruittHealth-Carolina Point, a nursing home in Orange County, has more than 60 confirmed cases of coronavirus in staff and residents, county Health Department officials confirmed Wednesday. Recent inspection records describe a series of problems at the facility, including failure to report a sexual abuse allegation to law enforcement.

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, through its Division of Health Services Regulation, oversees licensing of several types of long-term care facilities. Although many of these facilities cater to an elderly population, they may also house adults of any age, such as those with mental health issues or cognitive disabilities.

The licensing categories that North Carolina uses include nursing homes and adult care homes. Generally, adult care homes are inspected by state and county agencies. They receive a rating on a four-star scale, but the formulaic system does not always reflect recent or shocking violations.

Nursing homes, which are authorized to provide medical care, face federal inspection guidelines if they receive funding through Medicaid or Medicare. Although the state doesnt assign star ratings to nursing homes, the federal website medicare.gov evaluates them based on inspection reports.

In these four cases, the state had licensed PruittHealth for 138 nursing home beds, Pinehurst Healthcare for 144 nursing home beds, Pine Forest for 24 adult care home beds and Cherry Springs for 60 adult care home beds.

CPP conducted a major investigation into the states oversight of adult care homes in 2017, raising questions about inconsistencies and effectiveness, as well as drawing attention to the states lack of full compliance with a related federal settlement.

As of Sunday, 23 confirmed cases of COVID-19 were identified in residents and staff at Cherry Springs Village in Hendersonville, according to a statement the Henderson County Health Department.

Those individuals are being treated in isolation by health professionals, and the community is under quarantine until further notice, James Harvey, a spokesperson for Cherry Springs Village, said in a statement Sunday.

Harvey emphasized the facilitys adherence to strict health guidelines from the state and the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionto prevent infections.

Asked by CPP about the facilitys recent history of deficient inspections, Harvey responded in an email, We immediately corrected these deficiencies. He added that those points were irrelevant to the new infection control measure the facility put in place in February.

Cherry Springs Village continues to follow strict infection control protocols, including the use of personal protective equipment when providing care, wearing masks at all times and changing clothes and following decontamination procedures each time they enter or exit the building.

The facility issued a press release with a posed image of staff members, announcing them as heroes, on Wednesday.

Asked by CPP whether this might be perceived as a cynical marketing move during the crisis, Harvey responded that the company wasnt doing any marketing currently.

Right now, we have genuinely heroic staff in our communities all over the state of North Carolina trying to prevent COVID-19 from spreading, he said. They are saving peoples lives at the risk of their own.

An inspection at Cherry Springs Village in November 2019 came in response to a complaint about bedbugs. The surveyor who completed the inspection wrote that the facility was out of compliance with sanitation rules requiring effective measures to keep out vermin.

Interview with the administrator revealed a current bedbug problem has been ongoing since October of 2018, the surveyor wrote on Nov. 22. Records indicated multiple rooms had been treated on at least two occasions for bedbugs, but the surveyor observed live bedbugs. The facility agreed to pest control treatment in additional rooms, plus ongoing treatment.

The report also found that the facility was not effectively cleaning rooms, which was interfering with resolving the infestation. The surveyors described the observation of 15 dead bedbugs that had not been cleaned up in one room.

An annual inspection in September cited the facility for multiple issues with cleanliness and food storage and labeling. Among other issues, an ice machine that had built up a black residue wasnt being cleaned because different staff members thought it was someone elses responsibility.

North Carolina rates Cherry Springs Village with 3 out of 4 stars, which has been consistent since 2016 despite the deficiencies cited in inspection reports.

Cherry Springs Village is owned by Hickory-based Affinity Living Group, a for-profit operator of long-term care facilities in eight states.

At least 30 cases of COVID-19 have been linked to Pine Forest Rest Home in Potecasi, according to Northampton County health officials.

James Glascock, 65, a Pine Forest resident admitted to a nearby Virginia hospital in late March, tested positive for the illness and later died from related complications, according to a report from WRAL.

His family said he was new to Pine Forest and had been there just over a week when he was admitted to Southampton Memorial Hospital in Franklin, Va.

A statement from county Health Director Andy Smith issued March 28 said all patients and residents at the facility had been tested out of an abundance of caution. At that time, he described the additional cases as asymptomatic.

The Health Departments investigation into the matter remains ongoing, but Mr. Smith confirms the overwhelming majority of these cases have had good outcomes, a county spokesperson said Tuesday in response to questions from CPP.

An annual inspection in September found multiple issues at Pine Forest Rest Home, including failure to implement an infection control policy consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines to be followed, with staff was exposed to bodily fluids of a resident that posed significant risk of transmission of pathogens.

According to the report, special procedures were put in place for a resident with a severe colon infection but were not consistently followed.

A housekeeper told inspectors that she was advised to wear personal protective equipment when entering the residents room but had not been given any protocol about what do to when she entered the room and found urine and feces all over the room when he first arrived.

Although she used water and bleach, she had no guidance about the proper proportions to disinfect the room.

Other personnel apparently did not consistently handle soiled items from the residents room with sufficient care to prevent contamination, according to the report.

Separately, the same report found that food at the facility was being stored improperly and without proper labeling. It also found that nutritional requirements, including those of residents with special dietary needs, were not being met consistently.

Following this inspection, Pine Forest Rest Homes state rating dropped to two stars in early 2020, after having been rated at four stars since 2012.

Pine Forest is registered with the state of North Carolina as an independent nonprofit company.

The Moore County Health Department worked with FirstHealth Regional Hospital early this week to have all residents and employees at Pinehurst Healthcare & Rehabilitation center tested for COVID-19 by Tuesday after an initial positive test was linked to the facility over the weekend, according to a statement Wednesday from the Health Department.

Of 96 current residents, 26 tested positive, as did five of 115 staff members. However, some results have not yet been received, according to health officials, who said there were no severe cases so far and those with confirmed cases have been isolated.

To date, Pinehurst Healthcare & Rehabilitation Center has consistently followed all local and state directives meant to curb the spread of the virus, including restricting visitation of all visitors and nonessential health care personnel as well as strictly adhere to infection prevention practices, the Health Department statement said.

Pinehurst Healthcare and Rehabilitation is rated much below average, according to the federal website medicare.gov.

A state recertification inspection conducted in January found a long list of problems with accurately recording and maintaining the status of multiple patients under the mandated federal minimum data set guidelines, or MDS.

In some cases, patients did not receive required care, such as regular blood screening for a diabetic patient receiving insulin.

The report also cited the Moore County nursing home for not clearly dating medication and failing to dispose of expired medication.

An earlier inspection report last July, in response to a complaint, found problems with the facilitys handling of CPAP devices to help patients breathe, including questions about whether they were being cleaned properly.

Pinehurst Healthcare and Rehabilitation is part of the for-profit Yadkinville-based Triad Group, which operates 25 long-term care companies.

Orange County health officials said strike teams from UNC Hospitals, Duke Hospitals and Orange County Emergency Services are focusing on prevention and response at the countys long-term care facilities and had tested all staff and residents at PruittHealth-Carolina Point even if they had no symptoms.

Seven residents of PruittHealth have been taken to Duke University Hospital, according to Kristin Prelipp, a spokesperson for the Orange County Health Department.

PruittHealth-Carolina Point, which has a Durham address but is located in Orange County, is rated much below average, according to medicare.gov.

The state conducted a complaint investigation at the facility in February and found that officials failed to tell law enforcement about the alleged sexual abuse of a resident by staff.

A state complaint investigation in January found that the facility failed to notify a patients doctor when the patient refused to accept medication.

Georgia-based PruittHealth is a for-profit corporation operating more than 90 long-term health care facilities throughout the Southeast.

Editors note: CPP lead investigative reporter Kate Martin also contributed to this report

Read this article:
Inspections of long-term care facilities with outbreaks - North Carolina Health News

TW: This essay discusses suicide

I had just finished my first and most brutal semester at Morehouse College days before. I went over to my brothers house to stay there before heading back home to North Carolina. Sitting in the back room scrolling through Twitter, I heard my eldest brother start crying in the living room. Then my twin brother followed. I got up and walked to the front of the house where my brother told me the news. Tifah died, he said shaking.

It was December 16, 2014. A cold night in Atlanta. But when I heard the news, I felt swelteringly hot. In that moment, every memory wed ever shared flashed before my eyes. The second-to-last time I saw my sister was early in the summer when she took me to visit Morehouse. The last time I saw herand the last time anyone saw her, for that matterwas the day after we returned from a concert she took my brother and I to for our 18th birthday.

On our way back to town after the concert, we didnt stop for gas until it was too late. Stuck in front of a gas station that was not open, and a motel too expensive for the bed bugs it was sure to have, the three of us slept in the car together. Tifah was such a positive spirit that, despite how much my brother and I wanted to be frustrated, we couldnt be. Instead, we spent that night talking about how sure we were that an increase in our finances was coming. She talked about the get-money-quick schemes she was part of; returning to school at UNC Chapel Hill, and the hardships of life, but how excited she was to get over that hill.

We slept for only a few hours. When the sun rose, we got gas, got breakfast, and got back on the highway. But I left my blazer in her car. So she dropped it off to me the next day. I didnt know that July 23, 2014, was going to be the last day I got to see my sister, but after that day we all struggled to get into contact with her. She would post on Facebook here and there about some of the things she was doing to obtain wealth, as she put it, to get herself and her family out of poverty. But none of us were able to contact her to know how she was doing until we got that call.

The details are far too gruesome for me to revisit. However, what I am entirely certain of is that, though my sister died by suicide, it was capitalism that killed her. Capitalism is a socioeconomic system under which all means of productionor resources specifically used to produce goodsare privately owned by individuals and companies. Through this system, these people and companies, which help make up the bourgeoisie class, make most of the decisions in society and own most of the property.

In a world like this, money is withheld from the public, leaving many communitieslargely and disproportionately Blackimpoverished and scavenging for resources. These circumstances are what led to my sisters death.

She left school to take care of her mom and family. And she, like so many others, was too poor to afford to return to school. She eventually found herself in an abusive relationship. And each of these things combined led to her being clinically depressed. While most research shows that Black people are less likely to die by suicide, other research shows that this is only true when examined on the surface.

According to this research, due to insufficient training of coroners and medical examiners, as well as Black peoples religious ties and other legal implications, Black womens deaths by suicide are oftentimes not marked as such. But anti-Blackness and capitalism have also always forced Black people, especially poor Black women, to internalize the idea that we are to always be strong, resilient, and capable of surviving anything.

Attitudes about Black womens inability to feel pain led to The Father of Modern Gynecology, James Marion Sims, experimenting on enslaved Black women without anesthesia. Or to Samuel A. Cartwright coining terms like Drapetomania that would be used to diagnose the Slave with false illnesses, which would essentially birth what we now understand to be scientific racism.

Scientific racism has been the often unnamed cause of death for so many Black people. And it is a byproduct of capitalism in the same way that poverty is. With regard to Drapetomania, this illness was created specifically with the intent to characterize the Slave who sought to flee the plantation as psychologically abnormal and inept. This served only in the interest of the Master who gained capital at the expense of the Slaves labor. This remains true today, even as the Slave and Master have taken new form.

My sister had so much to offer the world, but what is more important to this story is that the world refused to offer itself to my sister.

She was failed by capitalism, just as we all are. She was failed by the medical industrial complex who mistreated her mental illness. She was failed by a world that, despite the numbers indicating that Black women are disproportionately affected by domestic violence, prioritizes maintaining patriarchy over the lives of the women it harms most.

Suicide is murder by the state. The longer capitalism is a fully functioning socioeconomic system, the more Black people it will kill. When marginalized folk take our lives, its because the state already has. We see no other option.

We are inching towards the 5 year mark since my sisters death. I think of her every day. Nearly five years later and I am still organizing around the destruction of capitalism on her behalf, and I wont stop. I believe in a better world because she lived; I organize in this current world because she no longer does.

My sister was murdered. Yours doesnt have to be.

Excerpt from:
When Marginalized Folk Take Our Lives, It's Because the State Already Has - Wear Your Voice

CHARLOTTE, NC It's the two words no homeowners want to hear: bed bugs. Orkin, the pest control and protection service, recently released its annual rankings of the 50 most bed bug-treated cities in the nation, and Charlotte finished in 20th place.

There is some slightly good news for our city. The No. 20 ranking means Charlotte improved from its No. 19 ranking on last year's list.

The rankings were based on metro areas where Orkin performed the most bed bug treatments from Dec. 1, 2018, to Nov. 30, 2019. Both residential and commercial treatments were included.

For the last three years, Baltimore was the No. 1 city in the nation for bed bugs; but its nearby neighbor, Washington, D.C., took the top spot in 2020.

Here are the top 10 cities overall:

"While bed bugs have not been found to transmit any diseases to humans, they can be an elusive threat to households," said Chelle Hartzer, an Orkin entomologist who was referenced in a press release for the rankings. "They are excellent hitchhikers, and they reproduce quickly, which make it nearly impossible to prevent bed bugs."

A description for the blood-sucking bugs on the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website sounds like something from a Stephen King novel: "parasitic insects that feed solely on the blood of people and animals while they sleep."

The reddish-brown bugs are typically 4 to 5 millimeters in length, or the size of Abraham Lincoln's head on a penny. The creatures are also known for multiplying incredibly quickly, as females can deposit one to five eggs a day in the right conditions.

Orkin provides a range of tips to prevent bed bugs from inhabiting your home:

The complete ranking of the most bed bug-treated cities is available on Orkin's website.

Read more:
Charlotte Ranked As A Top 20 City For Bed Bugs: Orkin - Charlotte, NC Patch