A HOLIDAY INN near Heathrow Airport has been booked up to be used as a coronavirus quarantine centre, it has been reported.
The Holiday Inn Heathrow Ariel hotel appears to be fully booked until March 17 as the government is deciding on whether to evacuate 74 Britons quarantined on the Diamond Princess currently moored in Japan.
Sources told The Independent the hotel has been block booked as a potential coronavirus quarantine zone for international visitors who develop the virus or for Brits who have been evacuated from overseas.
They stressed to the paper that there had not been any cases of coronavirus at the hotel which is not on airport property.
The Independent further reported that guests with bookings at the hotel have been moved to sister hotels.
A spokesman for InterContinental Hotels Group, which is the firm that operates the three-star hotel, told The Sun Online the Holiday Inn had been “block booked” and would not comment further because bookings are “private”.
A spokeswoman from Public Health England told The Sun Online they would not comment on individual cases.
An NHS accommodation block at Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral, and a hotel and conference centre at Kent Hills Park in Milton Keynes have already been used to quarantine people who were evacuated from Wuhan – the epicentre of the virus.
It comes as the government is deciding on whether to evacuate the 74 Brits from the cruise liner in Japan – where at least 454 people have now tested positive for the Covid-19 virus.
www.thesun.co.uk/news/10979539/heathrow-airport-hotel-coronavirus-quarantine-centre/