Hantavirus latest: First British passengers pictured leaving cruise ship being evacuated in Tenerifenewsline24

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has said 22 British passengers and crew will be transferred to an isolation facility at Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral, Merseyside, after being repatriated to the UK.

After returning to the UK, the passengers will be housed and provided with clothes at an accommodation block on the Arrowe Park site, away from the hospital’s public areas to receive clinical assessments and testing as a precautionary measure.

The hospital was used as the UK’s initial Covid quarantine site in 2020. Blue tarped fences around accommodation blocks being erected on Sunday morning.

Emergency services in the North West of England said they expected the passengers to be kept in the “managed setting” for up to 72 hours.

They added that the NHS Trust and hospital is “operating as normal” with no risk to patients, visitors or staff and “people should continue to come forward for care as usual”.

Following their isolation, public health specialists will assess whether passengers can isolate at home or at another suitable location based on their living arrangements.

Britons returning to the UK will stay in self-isolation for 45 days and will not be allowed to take public transport to their homes.

British passengers and crew have now disembarked the cruise ship and will be taken back to the UK for further testing.

Once they arrive in the country, the 22 Britons will be taken to a hospital in Wirral, Merseyside, for “clinical assessment and testing, health chiefs said.

They will be held for 72 hours, after which specialists will decide whether they can isolate at home for 45 days or another suitable location.

A joint statement from NHS England North West, NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICB, Merseyside Police, North West Ambulance Service, and Wirral Council added: “In line with advice from the UK Health Security Agency, on arrival they will be taken to a managed setting for clinical assessment and testing. We expect this initial stay to be up to 72 hours.

“Following this, public health specialists will assess whether they can isolate at home or at another suitable location, based on their living arrangements. The risk to the general population remains very low.

“Our partner organisations are working together to ensure that all returning passengers are welcomed, comfortable and well supported throughout their stay.”

There are currently 22 British citizens – 19 passengers and three crew members – being evacuated.

None of the passengers coming back to the UK are showing symptoms of the virus, the chief of the World Health Organisation said earlier.

Twenty-two Britons who had been travelling on the MV Hondius are now being evacuated, it is understood.

Pictures show the passengers wearing blue PPE boarding a bus, which will take them to Tenerife Sud airport, where they will then board a flight back to the UK.

All the passengers are asymptomatic and will be flown to a specialist facility in Merseyside.

Spanish passengers on board the MV Hondius have now arrived at the Gomez Ulla Military Hospital in Madrid.

Pictures show police helping to escort a convoy carrying the 13 Spanish passengers into the hospital, where they will receive further testing.

Dutch passengers are now evacuating the MV Hondius, following French and Spanish citizens.

The Dutch plane ‌will also transport passengers from Germany, Belgium and Greece, Spanish health minister Monica Garcia said ​on Sunday.

After that, passengers from Turkey, France, the UK and US will be evacuated.

Two Argentine officials investigating the origins of the outbreak on the ship, which sailed from southern Argentina, said this is now the government’s leading hypothesis.

The couple visited a landfill site during the birdwatching tour, authorities said, where they may have been exposed to rodents carrying the infection. Authorities previously said that Ushuaia and the surrounding province of Tierra del Fuego had never recorded a case of the hantavirus.

A specialist team of army and medical personnel have been parachuted on to the British overseas territory Tristan da Cunha with medical aid and equipment after a British national showed symptoms of hantavirus.

They are currently in hospital on the island where they live, the UK minister for the overseas territories, Stephen Doughty, said in a statement.

French medics have been pictured this afternoon awaiting the arrival of French citizens off the MV Hondius at Paris Le Bourget airport in Le Bourget.

The group were one of the first to leave Tenerife earlier on Sunday.

Spain is carrying out a “compassionate” and “efficient” operation to evacuate more than 140 people from a virus-stricken cruise ship, the country’s health ministry has said.

In a post on X, health minister Monica Garcia wrote: “The entire world is watching us, and Spain has demonstrated its capacity to lead an international public health emergency.

“We are carrying out an unprecedented evacuation in coordination with 23 countries. We are a compassionate and efficient country at the same time.”