STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Professional “nit pickers” on Staten Island say business is booming, as a surge in head lice cases currently plagues the borough’s youngest schoolchildren.
“COVID kept it quiet, but now I’m seeing a mad increase,’’ said Lena Gorelik, owner of Lice Free Noggins, which conducts private lice removal services in all five boroughs of New York City.
Gorelik said case numbers are climbing on Staten Island, and she’s received numerous calls from parents of young children for private treatment.
‘INCREASE IN CLIENTS’
“We’re definitely seeing an increase in clients reaching out for services,’’ she said.
Several Staten Island lice removal technicians who spoke to the Advance/SILive.com said they experienced a huge drop in business during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, when virtual schooling kept children’s heads distanced from each other. Head lice can only travel by crawling from one hair shaft to another. They can’t jump and they can’t fly.
Many business owners said they were forced to close up shop.
But lice removal services’ phones are now ringing at rates even higher than they did before the pandemic, representatives from businesses serving the borough said.
The increase in cases is caused, in part, by the holiday season, one said.
“We see an increase at this time of the year, because families are together over Christmas, either on vacation or hanging around the house,’’ said Karen Sokoloff, the former owner and current adviser to LiceDoctors, based in Manhattan. “Kids have picked up head lice at school, and then they give it to their families. They are very contagious. More often than not, if we find it in the child, the mom has it as well, and often siblings.”
The cases have more often been reported in elementary schools, where children are more likely to work and play closely together, the technicians said.
“Little kids, they don’t have personal space awareness at all, especially the littlest of the…
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