Britain airlifts hantanvirus patients from remote South Atlantic islands
Eight passengers and two crew from the hantavirus-hit Hondius cruise ship are being flown from the British islands of St. Helena and Ascension in the South Atlantic back to the United Kingdom for observation, most likely at Arrowe Park Hospital near Liverpool. Photo by Adam Vaughan/EPA
May 13 (UPI) — Ten suspected hantavirus patients are being flown from the British islands of St. Helena and Ascension in the South Atlantic back to the United Kingdom to complete their self-isolation at a former COVID-19 facility, the country’s main infectious diseases agency said.
The eight passengers and two crew from the hantavirus-hit Hondius cruise ship are part of a program to relocate “some contacts who are already isolating to places where they can safely self-isolate with access to appropriate specialist medical services,” the U.K. Health Security Agency said in a news release on Tuesday.
“England’s National Health Service high consequence infectious disease network is well equipped to respond if they become unwell. Currently none of these contacts are symptomatic and this is precautionary to support communities in U.K. overseas territories,” the agency said.
The patients being flown to Britain all left the MV Hondius when it stopped in St. Helena on April 24, with the ship going on to Cape Verde, where it was refused permission to dock, before finally disembarking on Tenerife on Sunday.
UKHSA did not say where the patients would be taken on arrival in Britain, but Arrowe Park Hospital in northwestern England, where at least 20 other patients from the Hondius are currently quarantined, was the most likely destination. The hospital has a specialist isolation wing and was a designated quarantine facility during the pandemic in 2020.
The agency said plans were underway “where it is safe and possible” to discharge the 20 existing Arrowe Park patients, 18 Britons, a German citizen and a Japanese national, after completing a three-day quarantine.
Each patient assessed as fit to safely serve out a 45-day isolation period at home will receive a tailored support package with daily monitoring from health protection teams across the country until they receive the all-clear, said UKHSA.
“We are grateful to the passengers for their cooperation and patience in what we appreciate has been a very unsettling period for all involved. As this first assessment period concludes, our priority remains to ensure everyone is safe and well supported, wherever they complete their isolation. Our teams will continue to be there for all of the affected individuals every step of the way,” said the agency’s chief scientific officer, Professor Robin May.
On Saturday, the British military conducted an airdrop of medics and four tons of oxygen and other medical supplies on Tristan da Cunha, another island in the St. Helena and Ascension Island British Overseas Territory, to treat a hantavirus patient who left the Hondius when it stopped there in mid-April.
The patient is a resident of Tristan da Cunha, population 220, one of the most remote places on Earth, 1,510 miles southwest of St. Helena and 1,750 miles west of Cape Town, which has no airstrip and very limited medical facilities.
