First plane carrying passengers evacuated from hantavirus-hit cruise ship leaves Tenerife – Europe live | Hantavirus

Sky News is reporting that 20 British nationals who were passengers aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship will fly back to the UK today from Tenerife. Two further people – who are dual nationals – will get on separate repatriation flights to other countries, the outlet reported.

As we have previously mentioned, the MV Hondius arrived in Tenerife on Sunday morning, with Spanish authorities beginning evacuations of the ship by nationality.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said earlier that 22 British passengers and crew will be transferred to an isolation facility at Arrowe Park hospital on the Wirral, Merseyside, after being repatriated to the UK on a chartered flight.

Over in the UK, British prime minister Keir Starmer’s premiership looks like it could be on the verge of collapsing next week as pressure grows on him to step down after Labour suffered heavy losses in historic local elections. You can keep up with the latest developments in our UK politics live blog:

Robyn Vinter

Robyn Vinter is north of England correspondent at the Guardian, currently in Tenerife

A press conference has just finished at the Tenerife port of Granadilla with Javier Padilla, the Spanish secretary of state for health, in which he explained the process for those leaving the ship.

Doctors have been taking the temperature of everyone on the vessel and filling out a health survey designed to identify hantavirus symptoms.

They are given plastic ponchos, face and hair coverings, and are taken in small groups from the ship to the dock, where they board coaches that take them to the airport, about a 10-minute drive away.

They are allowed to take small bags of personal items with them and the rest of their luggage will be left on the cruise ship and taken to the Netherlands for decontamination.

He said the UK and US had asked for further testing on board the MV Hondius, which was refused, but the countries were told they could test passengers on the plane as soon as it leaves the airport.

Countries are carrying out their own health checks, which for some, like the UK and Spain, involves PCR testing. He said the European Commission and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) were “trying to achieve a certain degree of coordination, and not a high variation among the different countries”.

“But every country has its own confidences.”

When asked about countries, such as the US, choosing not to impose mandatory quarantine on its citizens coming off the ship, he said it was up to those countries to take what they think is the best action, however, “I don’t think it’s best practice from a clinical point of view.”

He said 6 May was being treated as the last contact date.

The next passengers to leave are from the UK, France, Canada, the Netherlands. This afternoon passengers from Turkey, Ireland, and the US are expected to depart.

British paratroopers have dropped on to Britain’s most remote overseas territory, Tristan da Cunha, along with medics and medical supplies, after a case of suspected hantavirus was confirmed there, Reuters reports.

A team of six paratroopers and two military clinicians from 16 Air Assault Brigade jumped from an RAF A400M transport aircraft that flew 6,788 km (4,218 miles) from RAF Brize Norton air base in Oxfordshire to Ascension Island then another 3,000 km due south to Tristan da Cunha.

Dropped alongside them on Saturday were oxygen supplies and other medical aid. The A400M was refuelled mid-flight by a supporting RAF Voyager.

The operation is the first time the UK military has deployed medical personnel to provide humanitarian support via a parachute jump, the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

The supplies were primarily destined for a British man who UK health authorities say was a passenger on the cruise ship that was hit by a hantavirus outbreak and which docked at the island between 13 April and 15. The WHO said the man reported symptoms compatible with hantavirus on 28 April and that he is stable and in isolation.

“With oxygen supplies on the island at a critical level, an airdrop with medical personnel was the only method of getting vital care to the patient in time,” the Ministry of Defence statement said.

Tristan da Cunha, home to only around 200 people, is halfway between South Africa and South America. It is the world’s remotest inhabited island, more than 2,400 km and a six-day boat ride from St Helena, its nearest inhabited neighbour. It usually relies on a medical team of two people for its health needs, and is normally only accessible by boat as it has no airstrip.

The operator of the MV Hondius, Oceanwide Expeditions, has given an update on the plan for the ship after the evacuation operation is complete.

In statement the operator said after all guests and limited crew have disembarked, MV Hondius will take on necessary supplies at Santa Cruz, Tenerife before transiting to the port of Rotterdam, the Netherlands with the remaining crew members aboard.

The expected sailing time to Rotterdam is about 5 days.

Angelique Chrisafis

Angelique Chrisafis is the Guardian’s Paris correspondent

Five French passengers on the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship have boarded a special medical flight from Tenerife and are en route to Paris. The flight took off from Tenerife at around noon local time.

Nicolas Pillerel of the French embassy in Spain was present in Tenerife to oversee logistics. He told the French public broadcaster FranceInfo that the foreign office crisis centre had organised a special flight with medical staff on board to transport the five people to an airport in the Paris area.

The five cruise-ship passengers would then be hospitalised for 72 hours for tests and monitoring, in line with World Health Organisation guidelines.

After this, the five people would return to their homes in France where they would have to isolate for 45 days under strict monitoring and controls by French health authorities.

The French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu has called a special meeting of ministers and health officials in Paris this afternoon to discuss the situation.

We have some updates from Tenerife, where a small group of Spanish passengers evacuated from the hantavirus-hit MV Hondius cruise ship has reportedly left on a plane for the Gómez Ulla Central Defense hospital in Madrid. They will be under quarantine when they reach Madrid.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said yesterday that he thought Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was coming to an end (see this story for more detail).

“I think that the matter is coming to an end,” Putin told reporters after a scaled-back military parade in Moscow commemorating the Soviet victory in World War Two, referring to the “special military operation” (war) in Ukraine.

Putin indicated that he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe, saying his preferred negotiating partner would be Gerhard Schröder, who was German chancellor from 1998 to 2005, and has a background of being a close friend and ally of Putin, and history of business ties to Russia.

Germany has now responded to Putin’s suggestion, with an official telling the Reuters news agency on Sunday that the offer was not credible because Russia had not changed any of its conditions, adding that an initial test would be whether Moscow was willing to extend the three-day ceasefire that expires tomorrow. The official said Putin had made a series of unserious offers aimed at dividing the western alliance.

The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said recently that a planned deployment of US long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Germany – announced by the former US president Joe Biden – was being called off, at least for the time being.

Merz’s criticism of the US-Israeli war on Iran – and his suggestion that the US had been “humiliated” by Iranian negotiators – has angered Donald Trump, causing relations between Berlin and Washington to slump to a low point.

Pentagon officials are alarmed at the fact the US military fired over 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles in the first four weeks of war on Iran, according to the Washington Post.

The rapid rate of use prompted internal discussions about how to make more of the missiles available, sources told the US outlet.

Germany is reviving efforts to buy Tomahawk cruise missiles from the ​US, the Financial Times is reporting.

German defence minister Boris Pistorius is reportedly planning a trip to Washington to revive Germany’s offer to buy long-range systems, which was first submitted last July. The US is yet to respond to this offer.

The visit, however, hinges upon whether Pistorius can secure a meeting with Pete Hegseth, his US ​counterpart, the FT reports. “The key thing is to have the strike capabilities in Europe,” a “government insider” told the newspaper.

Tomahawk land attack missiles, first used in combat in 1991, are long-range, guided cruise missiles typically launched from sea to attack targets in deep-strike missions.

There are no European ground-launched long-range systems immediately available, according to the FT report. So the Tomahawk missiles, along with the mobile Typhon launchers Germany also reportedly wants to buy from the US, would allow the German armed forces to hit targets hundreds of kilometres deep into enemy territory if necessary.