Some of the Australian travellers on board the MV Hondius, the ship at the centre of the hantavirus outbreak, will return to New South Wales this week and enter Australia’s first purpose-built biocontainment facility.

The federal government is still finalising health measures and quarantine arrangements for the group of five people – four citizens and one permanent resident – about to disembark in the Canary Islands.

They are due to travel back to Australia on a charter flight to Perth alongside medical personnel in full PPE protective gear, who will monitor them and provide assistance if needed.

The ship, carrying 146 people, arrived at Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands, on Sunday morning after three people died of the virus and eight others became ill. Passengers and crew were confined to their cabins to help stop the spread of the virus.

An Australian government spokesperson said one New Zealand citizen will also travel on the plane. When the charter flight leaves Tenerife, safety measures will be implemented in line with guidance from the Australian Centre for Disease Control.

The flight was expected to leave Tenerife at 5pm, local time, on Monday, the last to leave the Canary Islands.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Dfat), which has consular officers on the ground in the Canary Islands to coordinate response efforts, held a call with passengers aboard the MV Hondius last night to discuss health precautions in the coming days.

The Australians and permanent resident being repatriated live in New South Wales and Queensland. The federal government said it was finalising quarantine arrangements with state health officials, and it will be the responsibility of the states to administer them.

NSW Health said on Monday it was working with the federal government and other states to receive, transport and provide care to passengers.

A spokesperson said that, on arrival, the passengers will immediately be transported by ambulance to the NSW biocontainment centre at Westmead hospital in Sydney, where they will undergo clinical assessment. Health officials will then assess “suitable quarantine arrangements”.

“These passengers will be closely monitored and, should any develop symptoms, they will be assessed by an infectious diseases physician and be provided appropriate care,” a NSW health spokesperson said.

“The risk to the public is low. Hantavirus is only rarely transmitted from person to person, and transmission requires close contact. People with hantavirus infection are not infectious before their symptoms begin. The time from exposure to hantavirus to the onset of symptoms (incubation period) can be up to six weeks.”

They did not say how long it was anticipated the passengers would have to stay at the centre.

The centre at Westmead came online in 2023, the first purpose-built biocontainment facility in the country. At the time, NSW Health described it as a “highly specialised … purpose-built” facility that can care for both adults and pediatric patients with “high consequence infectious diseases” such as Ebola or MERS. The facility has a dedicated elevator directly from a helipad or ambulance bay, its own sewage treatment plant and has been designed so clinicians use strict processes to put on or remove PPE.

Those protocols take about half an hour and involve more than 40 steps.

The federal government stressed that safety was the priority during the repatriation but added the risk to the broader populace remains low.

“The Australian government’s number one priority is the safety of passengers and the Australian community,” a government spokesperson said. “The Australian government is working closely with state authorities to coordinate arrival, health and transport arrangements. Quarantine and health arrangements are managed by states in accordance with their public health requirements.”

The evacuated passengers will be prevented from coming into contact with the general public on landing in Perth and will be moved directly from the charter flight to transportation that will take them directly to their quarantine locations.

Full details of those travellers’ quarantine requirements will be solidified in the next 24 hours and they could resemble something akin to those set out during the Covid pandemic.

Other countries are taking similar precautions for repatriated passengers from the cruise.

In France, passengers from the ship will be quarantined in hospital for 72 hours for a full assessment before they are sent home for 45 days in isolation with monitoring in place. That monitoring will include regular follow-up for six weeks, which corresponds to the maximum potential incubation for a hantavirus infection. In the UK, passengers will be taken to an isolation facility for similar assessments over 72 hours. Officials will then determine if they can isolate at home, or at another suitable location based on their living arrangements.

The Guardian has contacted the Australian CDC for comment, NSW Health and Queensland Health for details about the country’s own plans once the travellers arrive.

Murray Watt, the federal environment minister, told ABC News on Monday the event had obviously become a “terrible situation” for the Australian travellers, adding that proper quarantine arrangements would be in place.

“We want to make sure Australians receive the care that they need in this situation,” Watt told. “This is not a situation that people have walked into deliberately. And I think all Australians would want to see each other looked after in this sort of situation.”

Hantavirus, a group of viruses that are carried by rodents, can cause serious infection in humans, who are usually infected through contact with infected rodent urine, droppings or saliva. The World Health Organization (WHO) notes that infection can cause a range of illnesses from severe disease to death.

But transmission between humans is rare and only seen in settings with close, prolonged contact. The WHO noted recently that the threat to the global population remained low, and the Australian Centre for Disease Control said the risk of a widespread outbreak such as Covid-19 or influenza remained very low.

Rupert Campbell-Black is a bounder, a braggart, a scoundrel who won’t play by the rules, by Jove. “The man is a loose cannon,” hisses show-jumping coach Malise Gordon (Rupert Everett), as Rupert (Alex Hassell) directs his own cannon at the latest in a seemingly endless conga-line of pantingly grateful locals. By “his own cannon” I mean, of course, his penis. Or rather his “willy”, for there is no aspect of the anatomy – or, indeed, life – that Rivals will not reduce to a cartoon while pointing and sniggering like a schoolgirl. And quite right, too. Who wants boring old reality when you could be engaging in an explosive bout of nude tennis with the MP for Chalford and Bisley (“Tit fault!”)? Anyway, back to Rupert, who, as the aforementioned minister for sport and “most handsome man in England”, is the throbbing nub of this unapologetically preposterous adaptation of the late Jilly Cooper’s 80s bonkbuster.

Rupert has a head for business and a body for wearing jodhpurs while shouting “ARE YOU READY FOR ME TO COME DOWN YOUR CHIMNEY?” during sex. Men admire his ruthlessness; horses are magnetised by his reckless approach to leisurewear.

And now the alpha-cad is back, his buttocks ascending like bronzed, restless larks above Rutshire’s sylvan glades as series two thrusts jubilantly into view.

The last time we saw Rupert he was scampering into the night with ruthless producer Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams), the latter having just thwacked dastardly Corinium TV boss Tony Baddingham (David Tennant) over the noggin with some trophy or other. Why? Because Tony had found out about her involvement with rival consortium Venturer and arch-enemy Rupert and had slapped her, the bastard. The solution? Rupert will hide Cameron from Tony in his love-cottage in Devon, the best place to hold what we are unfortunately compelled to call “crisis bonks”. “Thank you,” pants Cameron after one such debriefing. “Plenty more where that came from,” smirks Rupert, his oiled thighs shimmering amid a cumulonimbus of Silk Cut. And there is. There is frantic halfway-up-the-stairs sex. There is shouting-into-a-full-length-mirror sex. And there is a soft-focus barnyard tryst during which Rupert buries his saturnine slab of a face between Cameron’s knockers and proceeds to bellow “NYAAAAARRR” while she thwacks his thighs with a riding crop. It’s quite something.

Buried somewhere within this thrashing forest of limbs is a plot. This, too, is ridiculous. We join the shaggers as they prepare for the 1987 general election. Will Rupert retain his seat or will Tony and monstrous tabloid hack Beattie (Annabel Scholey) conspire to stitch him up like a kipper? And who will prove victorious in the ongoing struggle to secure the coveted Central South West television franchise, eh? Who? WHO?

The acting – huge and gleeful within the ever-present fug of hairspray – is superb. Everyone involved is clearly having the time of their life. Not least Aidan Turner as densely moustached broadcast hunk Declan O’Hara. His expression in the shower as wife Maud (Victoria Smurfit) brings him to a juddering climax – think a badger slowly realising he’s left a Vesta curry in the oven – will live long in the memory.

Other things happen for seemingly no reason at all. A horse in pink legwarmers sashays past the camera. There is an unexplained closeup of a dancing sheepdog and a bit where twin polo players take their skimpy underwear off and leap, winkies akimbo, into an indoor pool.

Every frame is saturated with cigarette smoke and an affection for the 80s so intense it almost manages to make the era’s casual bigotry and venality look as quaint as boil-in-the-bag cod (the latter served here with a dented box of Micro Chips, in accordance with the scriptures).

The dialogue is, as ever, fabulous. There are tremendous references to Frank Bough. And there are many winking, twinkling jokes re hideously outdated attitudes to homophobia and the ignorance and panic that once surrounded Aids. Rivals walks this tonal tightrope in a flammable fuchsia tutu. Which is to say, perfectly.

How best to reward such exquisitely knowing escapism? Ten stars? Ten thousand stars? Rivals is beyond earthly praise. Let us instead insert a single rose between its tireless bum cheeks and raise a glass of Cinzano to its naked audacity. Bottoms up!