A police station in Luton in the East of England has been placed on lockdown after receiving a group of illegal migrant detainees who were feared to be carriers of a contagious disease.

Fifteen illegal migrants were discovered in the back of a lorry by British police, but a routine immigration violation arrest turned into a medical emergency when the men and women complained to headaches and started vomiting in custody.

The police station where they were being held was placed under quarantine and paramedics were called to take them to a medical facility. The medics declared the situation a “major incident”, reports the Daily Mail, as they inspected the arresting officers for contagion.

The revelation of the tense situation comes from a new Channel 4 documentary 24 Hours In Police Custody, which starts tonight. The programme will reveal how police were called after banging was heard coming from the back of a refrigerated lorry on the M1 motorway, and the terse follow-up as the migrants were moved to a hospital for tests.

It later transpired the men and women were actually suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning from the lorry, and were no contagion risk to the officers.

Speaking in the programme, a police sergeant lamented being caught up in detaining migrants, and that he believed there would be less arrests in his area if the lorries were properly checked at Dover. He said: “The whole immigration thing is such a big issue. It drains our resources. Police officers are down the hospital, it takes all our cell space up and it’s nothing to do with us”.

The number of migration arrests in the area jumped 75 per cent in the past twelve months, according to the report.

Although the vomiting migrants of Luton were a false alarm on this occasion, Europe has seen a number of real-life disease vector migrants as the migrant crisis intensified. Breitbart London reported last week on the epidemic alert at an Austrian luxury hotel converted into migrant accommodation after one inmate tested positive for louse borne Relapsing Fever.

Eradicated in Europe decades ago, the disease can be as fatal as Ebola and is transmitted by body lice. Austrian medical professionals placed areas of the hotel under quarantine, while sanitising staff, inhabitants, rooms, and clothing. The last major outbreak of the disease in Europe killed approximately five million.