They landed in Manchester Airport.
The 20 British passengers and crew evacuated from a cruise ship at the centre of a hantavirus outbreak have landed in the UK.
The group flew into Manchester Airport on a chartered flight from Tenerife, after the MV Hondius finally docked yesterday morning following weeks on the high seas.
Footage and photos showed them being driven into Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral, Merseyside, by coach late on Sunday night with the driver kitted out in a face mask and a clear plastic visor.
Alongside the 20 Brits were a German national (who lives in the UK) and a Japanese passenger.
All 22 of them have tested negative for hantavirus, which is the good news.
The UK Health Security Agency confirmed the group had been “safely transferred” to the hospital just after 8.40pm.
They’ll now spend 72 hours in a dedicated accommodation block while officials work out whether they’re well enough to see out the rest of a 45-day isolation period from home.
Janelle Holmes, CEO of Wirral University Teaching Hospital Trust, told the BBC the passengers will at least be allowed to ring their loved ones from inside.
“What we’ve learnt from past experience is they’re going to be absolutely shattered,” she said. “They’ve probably felt quite traumatised by the whole experience so the thing for us to do is to make sure that they’re here, they’re safe, they’re welcome.”
The Ministry of Defence has, predictably, insisted the risk to the wider public remains very low.
So what actually happened on the ship?
At least two people aboard the MV Hondius died of hantavirus earlier this month while the ship was sailing across the Atlantic.
A third death is also suspected to have been caused by the virus, and the World Health Organization says four other people on board have fallen ill with it. There are two more suspected cases too, including a British man currently stuck on Tristan da Cunha, a tiny British archipelago in the middle of the South Atlantic.
Hantavirus is a rare illness that you usually catch by breathing in dust from the dried droppings or urine of infected rodents.
Early symptoms are flu-like, fever, chills, body aches, and can take up to eight weeks to show up. But as it progresses, patients can struggle to breathe and, in the worst cases, suffer lung or heart failure.
Officials reckon the chances of it triggering a pandemic are slim. This particular outbreak involves the Andes strain, which doesn’t pass between humans easily because the virus tends to bury itself deep in the lungs.
The people most at risk of catching it from another person are those who’ve been in close quarters with an infected patient for long stretches — such as healthcare workers, family members, and so on.
Anyone working with rodents or in rural areas where the virus is common is also more vulnerable, including hikers and travellers.
If you do need to clean an area with rodent droppings, health officials say wear gloves and an N95 mask, and dampen surfaces with a bleach solution first. Whatever you do, don’t sweep or vacuum as that just sends infected particles flying into the air for you to breathe in.
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