Welcome to Camp Corona
A grim nurses’ block near Liverpool. Deliveries of fridges, duvets and video games — and a makeshift fence: Inside quarantine quarters for Wuhan Brits
‘They’re putting us at risk’
THIS scruffy apartment block close to the Wirral’s only major NHS hospital will be home for Britons evacuated from the coronavirus-hit Chinese province of Wuhan for the next fortnight.
Nurses and other hospital staff living in the block were forced to pack up belongings and leave their homes with just a few hours’ notice on Thursday evening.
It was reported that some had lived in the accommodation, 300ft from the main Arrowe Park Hospital, for up to a decade and were unhappy at being kicked out. They are being put up in local hotels at taxpayers’ expense.
Deliveries of televisions, fridges and children’s toys were seen arriving at the apartments yesterday, while workmen erected fences outside the block.
It is understood families will be allowed to stay together in isolation and will not be in ‘solitary confinement’.
Although none of the Britons arriving from China has shown any symptoms of the virus, MPs and union chiefs said they had been inundated with calls and emails from ‘panicked’ hospital staff and residents concerned that they were being put at risk.
The Unite union and Labour MPs Mick Whitley, Angela Eagle and Alison McGovern, who represent Birkenhead, Wallasey and Wirral South, said they were ‘disappointed’ the Department of Health had failed to inform them Arrowe Park had been earmarked as the quarantine site before they heard it on news reports.
In a joint statement, the MPs said: ‘Local people are understandably very concerned. We have already received lots of emails from our constituents. People are concerned about family members and friends who work at Arrowe Park Hospital and about patients who are being treated there. It is also a difficult time for hospital staff, with those who live at the accommodation reportedly being told to leave at very short notice.’
One unnamed nurse at Arrowe Park told a local newspaper: ‘Most staff heard it on the news first – which is terrible. Panic is the word I would use. At least warn your staff before the news. The Wirral population are worried also.’
Derek Jones, regional officer for the Unite union, later confirmed that no staff from Arrowe Park will be asked to treat those in quarantine. Instead specialist workers from the Department of Health will care for them.
Anyone who begins displaying symptoms will be transferred to the specialist infectious diseases unit at Royal Liverpool University Hospital across the Mersey.
Speculation was also rife among locals that the Wirral had been earmarked to take the evacuees because it is a peninsula which could be easily isolated in the event of an outbreak.
Chef Terry Haynes, 34, who was visiting his grandmother at the hospital yesterday, said: ‘ I’m a bit worried. It’s strange why they’re coming here. I guess it’s because it’s a peninsula. They can close the Wirral off. They can close the tunnel and the bridge if everyone gets infected.’
Patient Irene Morley, 72, said it was ‘ completely wrong’ that the Department of Health had chosen Arrowe Park.
She insisted: ‘It’s appalling – they could’ve put them somewhere else. Other countries are putting the quarantined people miles away. They are putting us at risk.’
However, other locals were more pragmatic about the risks.
Dennis Nelson, 76, said: ‘ They have got great facilities here and in Liverpool which is only a 30minute drive. There’s the centre for tropical medicine if anything goes wrong.’