UK hospital reassures public over risk from hantavirus passengers

Passengers from Britain are led to military buses to be taken to Tenerife airport and repatriated to Manchester. Photo / AFP

The hospital testing British hantavirus passengers on their return to the UK has said the risk they pose to the public is “very low”.

Nineteen Britons were due to be taken to an isolation unit at Arrowe Park Hospital, in Merseyside, on Sunday evening (Monday morning NZ time) after landing in Manchester from Tenerife.

Passengers on board a Titan Airways repatriation flight were expected to be hidden from the gaze of the public as they were transported to the same hospital unit used for people returning from Wuhan, China, at the start of the Covid pandemic in early 2020.

Health authorities have insisted the passengers, who have been evacuated from the Hondius, do not pose a wider risk to the public.

In a statement, the Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said: “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.”

The UK Health Security Agency also said the risk was very low.

The Hondius anchored off Granadilla port in Tenerife around dawn on Sunday after the Spanish government abandoned plans to dock the vessel after objections from Canary Islands residents.

Health workers in biohazard suits were seen boarding the Hondius to inspect the 147 people on board for symptoms of the rat-borne virus.

Small boats began ferrying passengers to the dock – Spanish passengers first – where they immediately boarded military buses to take them to the airport.

The passengers, wearing masks and blue protective coverings, could be seen taking photographs of each other to mark the end of the voyage.

Six planes, including one chartered by the UK Government, were waiting at Tenerife’s airport. A Spanish military aircraft was the first to depart, followed by a Dutch plane taking citizens from the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Greece off the island.

Three deaths have been linked to the Hondius outbreak of hantavirus, which is a rare strain that can transmit from humans to humans.

- The Telegraph

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