Not content with shutting down popular stores, bedbugs have checked into a city hospital.

A triage room at the Kings County Hospital in the East Flatbush area of Brooklyn was shut down Monday morning because of a bedbug outbreak.

A spokeswoman at the city’s Health and Hospitals Corporation said that, “last night a patient was brought to Kings County’s main Emergency Room. A bedbug was found, and as a precaution, the triage room in which the patient was seen was fumigated. Kings County Hospital has several triage rooms, and medical personnel continued to see other patients in other triage rooms. At no time were patients being triaged in the hallway.”

“There is no infestation. We are talking about one patient,” said the spokeswoman. The triage room, which is not part of emergency room waiting area, was reopened by midday Monday.

This outbreak comes on the heels of other high-profile bedbug infestations affecting two of the city’s most popular retail stores. On June 30, the Hollister Epic store in SoHo closed for three days because of a bedbug outbreak. A sister store, Abercrombie & Fitch at the South Street Seaport, was closed for six days due to the same problem, finally reopening last week.

The city’s Health Department does not track bedbug outbreaks in commercial or public spaces. In the case of the Abercrombie stores, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health said that “it is the responsibility of companies to proactively treat bedbug problems on their own. The Health Department offered guidance to the company and the company proactively treated the store.”

“The presence of a few bedbugs in stores and other commercial locations are rarely indicative of an infestation that results in people being bit or bedbugs being spread,” said the spokeswoman. “Bedbugs bite people when they are still, and that usually occurs in the home.”

(Source: Wall Street Journal)