The news that Brits coming from coronavirus-hit Wuhan will be quarantined at Arrowe Park Hospital has sparked a number of reactions from local residents.
on an evacuation flight from the Chinese city at the center of the coronavirus outbreak are due to land in the UK on Friday afternoon.
The flight is expected to arrive at the Brize Norton RAF base in Oxfordshire around 1pm, the FCO said in a statement.
A doctor attends to a patient in an isolation ward at a hospital in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province, (Image: AP)
On arrival, they will be taken by bus to Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral for a quarantine period of 90 days, where they will be housed in an NHS staff accommodation block with access to the internet.
Anyone with suspicious symptoms will be taken to the Royal Liverpool Hospital, which has a high-level infectious diseases unit.
Wirral residents will not be at risk.
But that hasn’t stopped some expressing their concerns on social media.
(Around) Brits will be taken to Arrowe Park on Friday (Image: Liverpool Echo)
Adrian said: “Well, that’s … reassuring.”
Dale tweeted: “Why the Wirral !!? Nice one. “
Gerard wrote:” Australia are putting the people evacuated from China on an island miles of the coast of Australia, England are putting them on Merseyside. “
And Phillip tweeted:” Oh great, Wirral’s in the news, you don’t often see that, so often overshadowed by Liverpool, it’d be great to see it get some positive pub … oh. “
Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock, who will deliver a statement in Parliament on coronavirus later today, leaving Downing Street in London (Image: PA)
However, other users looked to reassure locals.
Graham responded to comments saying: “You’d think it was the start of the zombie apocalypse, it’s a shame some people don’t understand the word quarantine. “
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And Rebecca tweeted: “Due to give birth at Arrowe Park any day now and I have full faith in all the wonderful NHS staff that they can deal with this developing situation.
“Let’s hope the people pass through their two weeks quarantine with ease and it goes quickly for them.”
Wirral West MP Margaret Greenwood said she was told by the health secretary that the government did not think any of the people being flown back from Wuhan would be carrying the virus.
The evacuation came after the UK’s four chief medical officers raised the risk level of the illness from low to medium and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an international public health emergency.
British passengers on the evacuation flight – who have mainly been in Wuhan and the surrounding Hubei province – had to sign a contract agreeing to isolation before they could board the f light, and underwent temperature checks.
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