A plane carrying 20 Britons evacuated from a cruise ship hit by hantavirus has arrived in the UK.
They flew home from Tenerife on a charter flight after the HV Hondius docked there early on Sunday morning and will now be taken to Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral, Merseyside, to isolate for 72 hours.
The risk to the general public remains very low, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has said.
Three people have died in the outbreak, including two of the six people whom the World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed have had hantavirus.
The other confirmed cases include two British nationals, who are being treated in the Netherlands and South Africa.
Hantavirus is a group of viruses carried by rodents. Most do not pass from person to person, but the Andes strain identified in a number of people who had been on the Dutch cruise ship, does.
Twenty-two British nationals were aboard the cruise ship when it docked in the Canary Islands on Sunday. None of them have reported symptoms but are being monitored, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said.
Janelle Holmes, CEO of Wirral University Teaching Hospital Trust, which oversees Arrowe Park Hospital, said that they will be screened and continuously assessed when they arrive there.
They will be housed in self-contained flats with access to phones so they can call friends and relatives. A specialist team will be on site throughout their quarantine to support them.
“What we’ve learnt from past experience is they’re going to be absolutely shattered. 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,” Holmes said.
After leaving Arrowe Park, the former passengers will be asked to self-isolate for a further 42 days as a precaution, UKHSA said.
As well as the confirmed cases, there are also two suspected cases, including a British man who is on the remote Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha. He is currently in a stable condition and in isolation.
A team of six British Army paratroopers and two medical clinicians have parachuted onto the island to help its two-person medical team provide care to the man and the island’s other residents.
Meanwhile two Britons are voluntarily self-isolating at home in the UK, having disembarked the vessel at St Helena on 24 April alongside dozens of other passengers before the first case of hantavirus was confirmed.
HV Hondius began its journey on 1 April in Ushuaia, Argentina, with about 150 passengers and crew from 28 countries reported to have initially been aboard.
With additional reporting by Dominic Hughes