Three evacuated from hantavirus cruise ship as Spain says vessel will dock in Canary Islands despite objection – as it happened

If you are a dual national who lives in the UK and planning a trip to Europe this summer – or in fact, anywhere abroad – make sure you have all your paperwork in order before you cross the border.

Because a British woman from Aberdeen and her 11-month-old baby have been stranded abroad because of new rules regarding dual nationals introduced by Labour, in the latest example of the policy causing people genuine problems with returning to the UK.

Our journalist Lisa O’Carroll reports that Sarah Schloegl was refused board on a Ryanair flight from Alicante last week after she went to Spain for a short break with her Austrian husband, Philipp, their three-year-old daughter and 11-month-old baby.

Since February, British dual-nationals have had to show a British passport or a certificate of entitlement of abode, costing £589, when they board flights, trains or ferries to the UK.

Schloegl said she followed the news but was unaware of this change and argued it should have been displayed on posters in airports and on airline websites months before the change, so passengers did not fall foul of the rule on return journeys.

The first she knew of the rule change was when she got to the departure gate in Alicante. Her older child, who has Austrian and British passports, and her husband, who has post-Brexit settled status, were told they could board the Ryanair flight, but the baby was refused.

“I do feel this is ridiculous, because my baby was born in the UK, lives in the UK, but she’s not allowed to enter the UK, even with me, her mum, who is British,” said Schloegl. “I’m from Scotland, our two kids were both born in Scotland, my parents, grandparents are all from Scotland and my husband has settled status.

Speaking of the US troops that Trump wants to pull out from Germany (14:45), it looks like not only Poland (10:25), but Lithuania is also interested in inviting some of them over to its territory.

The country’s president Gitanas Nausėda told a press conference that he hoped any US troops withdrawn from Germany would still remain in Europe.

Lithuania hosts more than 1,000 US troops and is ready to host more in the future, he added in comments reported by Reuters.

Back to the virus-hit cruise ship, we are now getting first pictures of air ambulances leaving the Nelson Mandela International Airport on Cape Verde after the earlier evacuation of three people from the cruise.

In other news, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported that Russia committed multiple violations of the ceasefire proposed by Kyiv, with 1,820 (!) incidents involving “shelling, attempted assaults, airstrikes, and the use of drones.”

Ukraine had suggested a ceasefire, starting last night, in response to the Russian calls for a brief truce during its planned Victory Parade in Moscow over the weekend.

But Zelenskyy pointed out that Russia was clearly not willing to engage with a real, longer suspension of hostilities.

“Ukraine clearly stated that it would act in kind, taking into account Russia’s persistent appeals through the media and social networks asking for a ceasefire during the Moscow parade,” he said.

And in the last few minutes, Zelenskyy implied that Kyiv could have a surprise or two in store for Russia as Moscow diverts resources to the protect the parade.

He said:

“We see that in recent weeks, additional rings of air defence have been built up around Moscow at the expense of a large-scale redeployment of systems from Russia’s regions. This indicates that the Russian leadership is not preparing for the ceasefire that has been the subject of so many statements, and is more concerned about its parade in Moscow than about the rest of Russia. At the same time, we observe that this creates additional opportunities for our long-range [attacks]. We will define our corresponding priorities.”

Zelenskyy said Ukraine would decide next steps later tonight.

Let’s bring you more lines from the Spanish ministers and their press conference on the virus-hit cruise earlier (14:17).

The ship is expected at Granadilla on the island of Tenerife “within three days,” and there will be a system for assessing the passengers and progressing their repatriation back to countries of origin, they said.

“A joint system for health assessment and evacuation will be put in place to repatriate all passengers, unless their medical condition prevents it,” health minister Monica Garcia Gomez told a Madrid news conference.

The 14 Spanish nationals – including one crew member – on board the MV Hondius will be transferred to Madrid’s Gomez Ulla military hospital, she added.

García said the government was monitoring the international alert “minute by minute” to take all steps to prevent any potential spread of the virus, AFP reported.

The health minister also responded to the local government’s criticism of the plan (9:53, 14:02), saying she had been in “constant contact” with its head, Fernando Clavijo, and he would be involved in all relevant planning.

German chancellor Friedrich Merz is marking his first anniversary in the job today (cue cute LinkedIn posts), and the jury is, erm, very much still out on whether he could be the man to save Germany, as many some hoped at the time of his election.

Describing Merz’s current position, the chancellor’s biographer Daniel Goffard said somewhat bluntly that “the cart is certainly stuck in the mud.”

Our Berlin correspondent Deborah Cole said his words nicely summed up a sense of strategic helplessness by the government in the face of compounding emergencies and intractable conflicts at home and abroad.

As she noted, a recent survey for US-based opinion research institute Morning Consult found Merz to have the second-lowest approval rating of 24 democratically elected world leaders, with just 19% of Germans saying they are satisfied with his work.

On top of that, he is currently trapped in a bitter spat with the US president, Donald Trump, after Merz said on 27 April that Iran was “humiliating” Washington at the negotiating table.

That provoked a series of angry responses from Washington, including Trump’s comments that Merz was doing a “terrible” job as chancellor – and a decision to pull out 5,000 US troops from the country.

In an interview with ZDF, released today, Merz was specifically asked about his relations with the US president, Donald Trump.

Merz said that he “continues to strive for a good transatlantic relationship, even if we have different opinions” on Iran, stressing he’s not afraid to say when he disagrees with Trump, like on Ukraine.

“We speak on the phone regularly, but a good partnership also involves differences of opinion,” he said.

Responding to a suggestion that the relationship in which Trump regularly harshly criticises him online is far from good, he said:

We have disagreements, but I can live with that.

He added that he would “continue to speak my mind in the future,” and “talk it over” with the US president.

Merz was keen to highlight that Germany was doing a lot to increase its defence spending, including last year’s change to its constitution - and “take on a leadership responsibility” within Nato.

It’s also a great moment to remind you of this brilliant – and hilarious - piece from our European culture editor Philip Oltermann on similarities between the lead character of the German sitcom inspired by “The Office” and Merz (which kind of ruined him for me, I’m afraid, so be warned – you will never look at him in the same way again.)

We are now hearing a bit more from the Spanish authorities, as they say that all passengers remaining on the cruise are currently asymptomatic.

The plan appears to be that after the cruise arrives in Tenerife, all non-Spanish passengers will be repatriated to their countries, while the Spanish passengers will be taken to a military hospital in Madrid for quarantine.

The operator of the luxury cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak has requested to dock at the Spanish port of Santa Cruz on the island of Tenerife on Saturday, the Canary Islands’ regional leader, Fernando Clavijo, told reporters in comments reported by Reuters.

He has previously said the regional government was opposed to Madrid’s decision to receive the ship (9:53), and going by the comments reported by the BBC, he is still very much not convinced.

“If the passengers are safe and healthy, it does not make sense that they have to come to the Canary Islands to be repatriated, they could do that from the international airport of Cape Verde,” he said, according to the BBC.

The director-general of the World Health Organisaion, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has just offered a bit more detail about the medical evacuation of the three people hit by the virus, as he insisted “the overall public health risk remains low.”

In a post on X, he said the three people were “on their way to receive medical care in the Netherlands,” as part of the WHO’s mission with the ship’s operator and national authorities in the UK, Spain, the Netherlands, and Cabo Verde.

“WHO continues to work with the ship’s operators to closely monitor the health of passengers and crew, working with countries to support appropriate medical follow-up and evacuation where needed,” the WHO’s chief said.

“Monitoring and follow-up for passengers on board and for those who have already disembarked has been initiated in collaboration with the ship’s operators and national health authorities. WHO thanks all those involved. At this stage, the overall public health risk remains low.”

The Dutch foreign ministry has just confirmed the nationalities of the three people evacuated from the ship, as confirmed by WHO, and they Dutch, British, and German citizens, Reuters reported.

We are getting more news about the hantavirus-hit cruise ship, with the German newspaper Bild now reporting that a German woman will be evacuated from the ship and brought to the German city of Düsseldorf for treatment.

She is believed to be one of the three people mentioned by the WHO in their report, and a close relative of one of the people who died from the virus, the paper said.

Oh, that was much faster than expected: the World Health Organization has just confirmed that the three suspected hantavirus cases have been evacuated from the ship and are on their way to receive medical care in the Netherlands.

Back to the hantavirus-hit cruise ship, it looks like there is more support planned with two doctors specialised in infectious diseases heading to join the passengers, the ship’s operator said.

“Two infectious disease physicians, currently en route from the Netherlands, will embark m/v Hondius and remain with the vessel after its anticipated departure from Cape Verde,” said Oceanwide Expeditions in a statement.

These doctors would only board the ship following the successful transfer of three people, two of whom are suffering from “acute symptoms”, the operator added.

In other news, Hungary’s incoming prime minister Péter Magyar has confirmed he will meet with Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome tomorrow.

Magyar is in Italy to attend a screening of a documentary on his Tisza party, “Spring wind”, which went viral before the final of the election campaign last month, at the Riviera international film festival in Sestri Levante.

His meeting with Meloni – who used to be close with the outgoing Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán – comes just days before his formal inauguration on Saturday.

Curiously, Magyar will be in Italy at the same time as some other leaders, including US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, who are both also expected to meet with Pope Leo and Giorgia Meloni.

The planned transfer of three passengers from the luxury cruise ship hit by a deadly Hantavirus is scheduled to take place on Wednesday morning, the ship operator Oceanwide Expeditions said.

“The planned transfer of three individuals from the vessel to specialized aircraft has not yet taken place. This is scheduled to occur this morning, Cape Verde local time,” the ship operator said in a statement quoted by Reuters.

“Once aboard the aircraft, these individuals, two of whom present acute symptoms, will be transferred to medical and screening facilities,” it added.

Separately, the World Health Organization is reporting that there is on-going evacuation of three people from the hantavirus-hit cruise ship, via AFP.

Three people – two crew members and one other person – thought to be infected with the virus were being taken off the MV Hondius, anchored off Cape Verde, the WHO said.

The ship has been at the centre of an international health scare since Saturday, when the UN’s health agency was informed that three passengers had died and the suspected cause was hantavirus – a rare disease usually spread from infected rodents typically through urine, droppings and saliva.

South Africa has identified the Andes strain of hantavirus, which spreads human-to-human, in two people who came off a cruise ship hit by an outbreak of the disease, the health minister’s presentation to parliament showed on Wednesday.

The ship, the MV Hondius, was preparing to travel from Cape Verde towards Europe, Reuters reported.

The presentation seen by Reuters said tests done by South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) revealed that the Andes strain was the cause of infection in a Dutch woman who died in Johannesburg, and a British man who is still in hospital. Both had become ill on the ship.

“This is the only strain that is known to cause human to human transmission, but such transmission is very rare and as said earlier, only happens due to very close contact,” it said.

Meanwhile, Poland’s defence minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz urged Nato countries to increase their defence spending as quickly as possible.

Speaking at a Defence24 Days conference in Warsaw, he said:

“Europe… is capable of developing its economic potential on an unimaginable scale, but it must say directly: this is the priority today. This is our greatest task today. There is no point in waiting until 2035 with five per cent. It must be achieved by 2030, because otherwise it may be too late.”

He particularly warned the countries in southern Europe that “the threat is not only related to the border with the Russian Federation or Belarus – the threat is everywhere and in cyberspace.”

Kosiniak-Kamysz said Europe needed to take more responsibility for its safety, “not to replace the US troops, because their role, strategic capabilities and nuclear deterrence is irreplacable, but to keep the US troops [here] and save the transatlantic alliance.”

Curiously, he also hinted at potential increase in US troops based in Poland, from current 10,000.

“Regardless of the decisions made today between the States and the Federal Republic of Germany, the presence of American troops and increasing this presence is our strategic goal. And we are ready for it, to receive further American soldiers. We have been preparing for this for a long time, not just today.”

He said Poland wants to have Europe’s largest army of 500,000 by 2030, including 200,000 professional soldiers.

Meanwhile, the Swiss government has just confirmed that one person infected with hantavirus – who was a passenger on the cruise ship – is currently being treated in Zurich.

They added that there is currently no danger to the Swiss population, Reuters reported.

In other news from Spain, the regional government of Canary Islands said it is opposed to allowing a luxury cruise ship that has been hit by the outbreak of the deadly hantavirusto dock on the archipelago, its leader, Fernando Clavijo, said.

“This decision is not based on any technical criteria, nor is there sufficient information to reassure the public or guarantee their safety,” Clavijo told radio station COPE, as reported by Reuters.

He added that he had requested an urgent meeting with prime minister Pedro Sánchez to discuss the issue. Clavijo leads a local coalition which includes the conservative People’s Party, the main national opposition to Sanchez’s Socialists.

Earlier today, Spanish state broadcaster TVE reported the cruise ship was set to dock at the Canary island of Tenerife, citing sources from the country’s health ministry. The ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

Spain’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez has urged the European Commission to trigger its blocking statute against US sanctions on the international criminal court, which would effectively tell European companies to not comply with the measures.

In a post on X, Sánchez said:

“Spain does not look the other way. Sanctioning those who defend international justice puts the entire human rights system at risk.”

In February last year, Donald Trump has signed an executive order that authorises aggressive economic sanctions against the international criminal court (ICC), accusing the body of “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and Israel.

As Ashifa Kassam reported in March, to date, 11 of the court’s officials – including the chief prosecutor and eight judges – have been placed under sanctions, subjecting them to measures that include bans on travel to the US and fines and prison sentences for American companies who provide them services.

Ever since, campaigners called on the EU to move against the sanctions, but the bloc did not want to put at risk already fragile relations with the US administration.

Now, Spain’s Sánchez, an outspoken critic of Trump who has already repeatedly drawn his criticism, is the first one to formally request the EU to act.

He said:

“The EU cannot remain idle in the face of this persecution. That is why, today, we ask the Commission to activate the Blocking Statute, to protect the independence of the international criminal court and the United Nations, and their actions to end the genocide in Gaza.”

The EU’s blocking statute is intended to protect Europe from extraterritorial sanctions imposed by other countries. It was used against the US before, in response to its sanctions on Cuba in 1996, and Trump’s first term sanctions on Iran in 2018.

But Sánchez’s initiative comes at an already tense moment for EU-US relations, with the bloc trying to defend itself from the latest threat of new US tariffs on cars and other industries, and looming threat of pulling out some US troops from the continent.

Later today, the EU will discuss the implementation of last year’s trade deal with the US, agreed in Scotland, in the latest push to get it in place before Trump comes up with more ideas on how to affect transatlantic trade.

In other news, I will also keep an eye on Friedrich Merz’s first anniversary as the German chancellor, US secretary of state Marco Rubio’s upcoming trip to Italy, and lots of smaller defence developments expected across the continent today.

Lots for us to cover today.

It’s Wednesday, 6 May 2026, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.

Good morning.