British nationals from MV Hondius to quarantine in Merseyside after hantavirus outbreak

British nationals aboard the MV Hondius were being moved to Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral for a 72-hour quarantine as the United Kingdom tightened its response to a hantavirus outbreak linked to the cruise ship. The hospital in Merseyside, which also housed returning British citizens from Wuhan at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, became the focal point for a carefully controlled repatriation plan built around symptom checks, isolation and cross-border coordination.

The World Health Organization said it was notified on 2 May 2026 about a cluster of severe respiratory illness on the vessel. By 4 May, it had identified seven cases in total, including two laboratory-confirmed hantavirus infections and five suspected cases. The outbreak had already been linked to three deaths, one critically ill patient and three people with mild symptoms.

The ship carried 147 passengers and crew, including 88 passengers and 59 crew members from 23 nationalities. It departed Ushuaia, Argentina, on 1 April 2026 and followed an itinerary that took it through Antarctica, South Georgia, Nightingale Island, Tristan da Cunha, Saint Helena and Ascension Island. Public health agencies have been watching the movement of passengers from the ship across multiple countries, with some British passengers evacuated earlier for medical care in the Netherlands and American passengers set for transfer on a U.S. government medical repatriation flight to Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, then to the National Quarantine Center at the University of Nebraska.

In the UK, the response has been led by the UK Health Security Agency working with the World Health Organization. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it was working urgently to help British nationals on the MV Hondius get home safely with public-health protections in place. UKHSA said the strain identified was Andes virus, a form of hantavirus that can rarely spread person to person, which helps explain why officials are treating the situation as a serious isolation exercise rather than evidence of a wider domestic threat.

For now, the protocol points to containment rather than community spread. British nationals can be repatriated once the ship docks if they remain symptom-free, with Arrowe Park Hospital serving as the quarantine buffer between an infected vessel and the wider public.