Twenty-two passengers from the MV Hondius cruise ship, evacuated from Tenerife due to a hantavirus outbreak, spent their first day in self-contained flats at an isolation facility in Merseyside on Monday. The group arrived at Manchester airport on a chartered Titan Airways flight on Sunday evening, marking the start of a repatriation operation involving multiple countries.
The UK's initial Covid quarantine site at Arrowe Park hospital in Wirral is housing 20 British passengers, along with one German national and one Japanese passenger, who were all tested for hantavirus before boarding. A flight from Australia is set to evacuate six passengers, while a Dutch flight will take 18, with both also carrying passengers from countries without their own repatriation flights.
Strict infection control measures were in place during the journey, with all individuals wearing personal protective equipment. Over the next 72 hours, passengers will undergo clinical assessments and testing at the facility, which offers self-contained flats with bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens and lounges.
Janelle Holmes, chief executive of Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, confirmed that no passengers have symptoms and stressed that hantavirus poses a low risk to the public. "You've got to have really, really close contact. It's not like Covid or flu," she said, adding that any symptomatic cases would be transferred to Royal Liverpool University Hospital's tropical diseases unit.
Public health minister Sharon Hodgson stated that passengers will be monitored closely for 72 hours as a precaution, with a 45-day self-isolation period to follow. During this time, they will have daily contact with UK Health Security Agency teams to ensure safe isolation.
