This is one of people’s most common suspicions when they’re diagnosed with scabies.
Did I get it from a hotel/motel?
Doctors also tend to point to that as the likely culprit too.
Funnily, this happened to me not long ago.
I had a terrible allergic rash and visited my GP.
I had been traveling two weeks earlier and as soon as he heard that he said, “Scabies”.
Turns out, it wasn’t scabies, and luckily I knew that from the start (since, let’s be honest, I am kind of an expert on it now!)
But if you have scabies and tell your doc you’ve been traveling recently, that’s exactly what they’ll point to as the source.
But can you really get scabies from a hotel room?
The short answer is yes.
However, it not common.
Let’s discuss why.
First, how is scabies spread? It’s spread through skin-to-skin contact.
This includes things like sports (wrestling etc), hugging your children, sex, holding hands and so on.
It’s no surprise that people often catch scabies from their romantic partners or kids.
The reason you’re unlikely to catch scabies from a hotel room is there is no skin-to-skin contact with previous guests.
Even if the person in that room before you had scabies, there’s no interaction where the mites can jump from them to you.
This means scabies would need to be surviving off the host for several hours or days before jumping to you.
This would be odd, as scabies don’t often leave their host for inanimate objects, such as chairs or beds.
They leave their hosts at opportune times – such as if they find other hosts to jump to.
There is an exception, which is Norwegian scabies – these are slightly different to “regular” scabies.
Norwegian scabies is a more intense type of scabies infestation, where it is normal for many scabies mites to sit atop the surface of the skin, rather than burrowed beneath it.
It’s more common for Norwegian scabies to fall off the skin, which is why they spread so fast.
However, if you have caught Norwegian scabies it will be very obvious – they sit atop the skin and cause very visible and fast-spreading clusters and rashes.
But let’s get back to regular scabies – what’s the chance you catch them from a hotel room?
Remember, scabies are able to live without a human host for some time – by most estimates up to 3-4 days.
This means it’s certainly plausible if you have scabies and have been at a hotel recently, that’s where you caught it.
If you’ve been diagnosed with scabies, and have slept in a hotel room recently, then you should consider it a possible place of transmission.
However, the point of this post it to say, there’s no need to avoid hotel rooms!
The chance of you catching scabies from a hotel room is less than 1 in a 100.
No need to maneuver your life around them if you’re worried about scabies.
The most likely outcome is you’ll leave in perfect health, just like almost everyone else.
Suffering from scabies?
Scabies does not heal on its own.
Left untreated, it only gets worse. More mites hatch, more mites burrow, more mites lay eggs.
You need treatment. Luckily, I’ve spent many hours collating the latest research and put together a treatment plan that worked. Not only did it work, it worked fast. Within a couple of weeks, I was back to normal.
That entire treatment plan has been written up in this blog post. It’s completely free to access, no gimmicks. If you’re suffering from scabies right now, I highly recommend you read it. Click here to go there now.
Wishing you back to health soon!
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