UK Transfers MV Hondius Passengers to Arrowe Park Hospital Isolation Facility in Merseyside

A hantavirus outbreak linked to the MV Hondius has prompted multiple countries to send aircraft to evacuate their nationals as the ship is expected to arrive at the Canary Islands on Sunday.

“- Published British passengers and staff aboard a cruise ship at the centre of a deadly hantavirus outbreak will be brought to a UK hospital site to isolate”

BBC

Spain’s interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said the European Union would send two additional planes for other European countries, and he added that the United States and the United Kingdom were also organizing evacuation plans for nationals of third countries.

BBC

The Spanish authorities said passengers would be allowed to take their essential personal effects, but that the rest of the luggage, as well as the body of a passenger who died aboard, would remain on the ship and be transported to the Netherlands where they would be disinfected.

In the United Kingdom, the UK Health Security Agency said MV Hondius passengers would be transferred to an isolation facility at Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral, Merseyside, after being repatriated to the UK from Tenerife on a chartered flight.

The BBC reported that the risk to the general public was “very low,” while the Guardian said all 146 passengers of the MV Hondius would be screened for the infection in Tenerife on Sunday morning before being transferred to their home countries.

British authorities said the returning passengers and crew would be isolated at Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral, Merseyside, after the ship docks in the Canary Islands this weekend.

A joint statement from NHS England North West, NHS Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board, Merseyside Police, North West Ambulance Service and Wirral Council said that “We expect this initial stay to be up to 72 hours.”

BFM

The London Evening Standard reported that the UK Health Security Agency said passengers would be housed in an accommodation block on the Arrowe Park site away from the hospital’s public areas for clinical assessments and testing.

Professor Robin May, chief scientific officer at UKHSA, said: “We continue to work at pace with our international partners to ensure the safe repatriation of British nationals from the MV Hondius.”

The Independent added that Britons returning to the UK would stay in self-isolation for 45 days and would not be allowed to take public transport to their homes.

As the evacuation operation moves forward, the World Health Organization has sought to reassure residents in Tenerife that they will not encounter passengers from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship.

“Hantavirus: Britons evacuated from ship placed in quarantine ATS May 9, 2026 — 19:05 Keystone-SDA May 9, 2026, 19:05 ATS About twenty Britons aboard the cruise ship where a hantavirus outbreak has been detected will be evacuated on Sunday to a hospital near Liverpool, England, for an isolation period, the NHS leadership told AFP, the public health system”

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Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote: “But I need you to hear me clearly: this is not another Covid.”

The Guardian said the WHO described hantavirus as “serious” but that the “risk is low,” and it noted that Tenerife received reassurance on Saturday in the form of a personal statement from the WHO director general.

In the UK, the WHO’s Maria Van Kerkhove said the agency “classif[ies] all people on board as what we call high-risk contacts,” while the BFM report described isolation measures including negative-pressure rooms and single ventilation systems for French passengers.

The Boursorama report also said that in France, the Institut Pasteur would not receive the passengers of the ship but only the prélèvements whose results would be transmitted to the Coreb, and it added that Sébastien Lecornu would hold a meeting at Matignon on Sunday to review the situation.