Passengers from the UK who are on board the hantavirus-afflicted cruise ship heading for Tenerife will be flown to Merseyside on Sunday for hospital quarantine.
The 19 British passengers and three crew will be transferred to Arrowe Park hospital in Wirral, which hosted British people returning from China at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
All 146 passengers of the MV Hondius, where an outbreak has killed three people and caused an international health scare, will be screened for the infection in Tenerife on Sunday morning before being transferred to their home countries.
The polar cruise ship is heading to the Canary Islands after spending days stranded off the coast of Praia, the capital of Cape Verde. Local authorities would not allow the ship to dock amid fears of a wider outbreak overwhelming the healthcare system of the small island nation.
Similar concerns have been expressed in Tenerife, which received reassurance on Saturday in the form of a personal statement from the director general of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, which described hantavirus as “serious” but said the “risk is low”.
He wrote: “I know you are worried. I know that when you hear the word ‘outbreak’ and watch a ship sail toward your shores, memories surface that none of us have fully put to rest. The pain of 2020 is still real, and I do not dismiss it for a single moment.
“But I need you to hear me clearly: this is not another Covid. The current public health risk from hantavirus remains low. My colleagues and I have said this unequivocally, and I will say it again to you now.”
He travelled to Spain on Saturday to meet the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, whose country is coordinating the evacuation from the vessel.
The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, successfully lobbied the Spanish government on Thursday to stop the vessel docking in Tenerife, instead agreeing it could be anchored offshore to allow for the transfer of passengers and crew. However, this would only happen when planes were on the asphalt ready to receive them.
But winds are expected to pick up off the coast of the island after Monday, meaning any personnel from countries where flights were not arranged may be stuck on board.
The ship is on track to arrive in Tenerife sooner than originally expected, in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The vessel will anchor off the coast near the southern commercial port of Granadilla where passengers will be screened for the virus.
They are being asked to isolate for 42 days from their point of potential exposure, which for most of the passengers will be many days ago.
In a message to hospital staff, the chief executive of Wirral University teaching hospital trust, Janelle Holmes, wrote: “The plan is for the British passengers and ship crew not displaying any symptoms of hantavirus to be escorted by UK government staff and given free passage back to the UK and as a precaution they will remain in isolation.”
She said the accommodation block on the Arrowe Park hospital site would “provide them with a safe place for their isolation period”.