Cambria County Prison officials said they’ve treated a cell block where an officer found a bed bug earlier this week.

They added that they’ve taken steps to make sure the lone bug doesn’t turn into a bigger pest.

Deputy Warden Bill Patterson said a corrections officer found a bedbug in a cell Monday in the west side of the jail’s Disciplinary Housing Unit.

The DHU is where all new inmates are sent for quarantine before being placed in other units, he said, so officials believe the bug likely came from a new prisoner.

“We believe it was someone who would have just come off the street,” he said.

Inmates were moved to the jail’s gymnasium and quarantined there for about two to three hours while a pest control firm treated the entire west side of the prison, Patterson said.

“We didn’t want it to spread to other areas of the prison,” he said.

While they believe there was only one bug, Patterson said officials are being proactive; pest control has returned to the jail and treated other areas, including the gymnasium and property rooms where inmates exchange their belongings and clothes for a prison uniform.

Patterson said there were no reports of prisoners or staff being bitten by bedbugs, but jail officials “will be following up with routine treatments” if necessary.

Mirror Staff Writer Kelly Cernetich Brown is at 946-7520.