Cruise ship Brits return home...to quarantine
Passengers from a coronavirushit cruise ship were immediately bussed to a quarantine unit after touching down in Britain yesterday.
A plane carrying 30 British and two Irish holidaymakers from the Diamond Princess touched down at an airbase in Wiltshire yesterday morning.
They were loaded on to coaches wearing masks for the journey to Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral, where they arrived last night and are set to stay in quarantine for 14 days. All those on the flight from Tokyo – including Scots newlywed Wendy Steele and her husband Alan – have tested negative for coronavirus.
Mr Steele, who had been treated for coronavirus in Japan, joked before boarding the flight that he was expecting a holiday camp atmosphere.
He w r o t e on Fa c e b o o k : “Wendy’s test was negative so ‘Butlins the Wirral’ here we come for 14 days.”
Ambulances also accompanied the convoy as it left Boscombe Down airfield for the journey north.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “Our number one priority has consistently been the health and safety of UK nationals.”
The Diamond Princess – which had been on a two- week cruise with 3,700 passengers and crew on board – had already been in quarantine for 16 days.
More than 630 people from the ship have c o n t ra c t e d coronavirus.
But it is feared that a British couple taken from the cruise ship to hospital in Japan after developing the virus may now be battling pneumonia.
David and Sally Abel, who are in their 70s, could not be evacuated with other passengers as they had already been infected.
Their worried son Stephen received a “distressed” phone call from Mrs Abel in the early hours of Friday to say they were being moved to a different hospital.
He said: “I spoke to them 24 hours later. My dad was saying, ‘I can’t do any more of this, son. It’s like prison in here’.”
Pneumonia is the chief complication of coronavirus, which has now killed 2,362 people worldwide. A total of 6,152 people have been tested for the virus in the UK, and there have been nine confirmed cases.
Healthcare workers in London will now be testing people in their own homes if they are suspected of having the virus. The system of testing at home is already being used by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.