Scott Walken

And what that means is that it is crucially important that anybody who has had contact with somebody known to have scabies

is treated and contact means household contact or in the case of a university staying in the same hall of residence.

are overnight visitors.

So they would all be considered contacts.

And even if they don't have symptoms, even if they don't have the itch, they would still need to be treated.

Because the real difficulty with scabies is if everybody isn't treated adequately, it can come back.

And then there's a whole cycle starts again and everybody needs to be treated again.

So it's a little bit involved.

So it is the treatment.

So there's a lotion that's used and that's the most commonly used treatment called Light Clear or permethrin.

And everybody needs to be treated.

Everybody who's at risk needs to be treated at the same time.

They put the lotion on from generally below the ears down all over the body and they leave it on overnight and then they wash it off the next day.

And then one week later, that treatment needs to be repeated.

It's really easy if we go to the loo and wash our hands or if our hands are immersed or washed for whatever reason, it would need to be reapplied to those areas.

And also it needs to be worked in underneath the nails with a little nail brush, for example, because otherwise what happens is a couple of mites can escape the treatment.

And then, of course, they'll reinfest the person.

And then the whole cycle starts again.

addition to that, the clothing and bedding, even footwear, need to be decontaminated.

So that can be done with a wash at a high temperature.