SAN CRISTOBAL DE LA LAGUNA: Pope Leo XIV told migrants at a reception centre on the Spanish island of Tenerife on Friday that &quot;all of us are migrants&quot;, on the final day of a weeklong visit to Spain focused on the plight of irregular immigrants. Tenerife is one of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, which have become a gateway for tens of thousands of irregular arrivals seeking a better life in Europe. The leader of the world&#39;s 1.4 billion Catholics is concluding his trip with a call for more help for migrants and action against traffickers, at a time when immigration remains a hot topic of political debate. &quot;In a sense, all of us are migrants, for we are all pilgrims on our way to our heavenly homeland,&quot; he said in an address to hundreds of migrants at Las Raices (The Roots), a reception centre housed in a former military barracks that was initially heavily criticised for overcrowding. &quot;Let us help make this journey more humane for everyone by contributing in whatever way we can,&quot; he added. The US-born pope is then expected to celebrate an open-air mass in the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in front of tens of thousands of people. After visiting Madrid and Barcelona earlier in the week, the pope arrived in another island of the archipelago, Gran Canaria, on Thursday. He condemned &quot;indifference&quot; towards migrants and cast a wreath into the sea at the port of Arguineguin to honour the thousands who have died trying to reach the Canaries. &quot;Human dignity has no passport,&quot; he said on the dockside before blessing a faded blue cross made of wood from a boat that migrants arrived on. &quot;Monsters lurk in these seas... traffickers who enslave women and children, and those whose indifference allows the poor to be swallowed up by exploitation or forgetfulness,&quot; he said. &#39;Critical moment&#39;Nearly 1,200 people died or went missing travelling from Africa to the Canary Islands last year, according to the International Organization for Migration, making it one of the world&#39;s deadliest migration routes. Europe, where governments have toughened their policies under pressure from the far right, &quot;cannot claim to uphold human dignity while growing accustomed to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic becoming unmarked graves&quot;, he said. The pope said the tragedy must &quot;appeal to the conscience&quot; of nations of origin and transit where migrants flee poverty and conflict and fall prey to trafficking gangs. &quot;We really value this visit. It&#39;s very important for us at such a critical moment,&quot; Mohamed Amjahdi, who arrived in the islands from Morocco on a boat when he was 17, told AFP in Arguineguin. From Tenerife, the pope will fly to Rome and is expected to speak to reporters on the plane. On July 4, Leo is scheduled to visit another port of call for migrants entering Europe, the Italian island of Lampedusa, solidifying the plight of migrants as a hallmark of his papacy.

Pope Leo XIV meets organizations working for the integration of migrants in the Plaza del Cristo de la Laguna, in San Cristobal de la Laguna, outside Santa Cruz de Tenerife, on the Canary Island of Tenerife on June 12, 2026. (AFP)

Europe

 Ends his Spain visit in Tenerife with a call for greater compassion toward migrants, saying 'all of us are migrants' and urging action against trafficking and migrant deaths on routes to Europe.

'All of us of are migrants,' Pope Leo XIV says in Canary Islands

WASHINGTON: American passengers evacuated from a cruise ship struck by a deadly hantavirus outbreak will not necessarily be quarantined, a top US health official said Sunday. Jay Bhattacharya, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), also urged the US public to remain calm about the hantavirus, saying: &quot;This is not Covid.&quot; The United States announced Friday that it would organize a repatriation flight for the 17 Americans aboard the MV Hondius, where three passengers have died and others have fallen sick. The ship has arrived in Spain&#39;s Canary Islands. The US passengers, all of whom are asymptomatic, will be taken to a specialized center in the rural state of Nebraska, but will not necessarily be quarantined there, Bhattacharya told CNN&#39;s &quot;State of the Union&quot; news program on Sunday. &quot;We&#39;re going to interview them and assess them for risk... if they have been in close contact with somebody who was symptomatic,&quot; he said. The biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center was activated ahead of the arrivals, with passengers &quot;expected to land in Omaha early Monday morning,&quot; spokesperson Kayla Thomas said in a statement. &quot;One passenger will be transported to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit upon arrival,&quot; Thomas said, because the person &quot;tested positive for the virus but (does) not have symptoms.&quot; The other passengers will go to the National Quarantine Unit for assessment and monitoring, Thomas added. Following this assessment and depending on the estimated risk, passengers will be allowed &quot;to stay in Nebraska if they&#39;d like, or if they want to go back home, and their home situation allows it, to safely drive them home without exposing other people on the way,&quot; Bhattacharya said. In either case, passengers will remain under observation for several weeks by health authorities to ensure they do not develop symptoms, he said, as happened with seven other Americans who left the ship earlier in the journey. According to the CDC, &quot;people are generally only contagious when they exhibit symptoms.&quot; Bhattacharya said the same protocol was followed during a 2018 outbreak &quot;of this exact strain of the hantavirus,&quot; which was successfully contained. Responding to criticism that there has been limited communication from US health authorities about the hantavirus risk six years after the Covid-19 pandemic he said the situations were not comparable. &quot;If the threat level were higher, then we would have obviously reacted differently,&quot; Bhattacharya said. &quot;This is not Covid,&quot; he said. &quot;We shouldn&#39;t be panicking when the evidence doesn&#39;t warrant it.&quot;

British Nationals, repatriated after a prolonged stay on a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak, arrive by coach at Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral, north west England, on May 10, 2026, where they are expected to stay for up to 72 hours.

Americas

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief says Americans evacuated from the MV Hondius after a deadly hantavirus outbreak are unlikely to face mandatory quarantine, stressing that the virus poses limited risk and 'is not Covid.'

Americans from virus-hit ship will not necessarily be quarantined: Official 

GENEVA: The World Health Organization (WHO) said Saturday it considered everyone on board a cruise ship hit with a deadly hantavirus outbreak as &quot;high-risk&quot; contacts who should be actively monitored for 42 days. There are nearly 150 people on board the MV Hondius at the centre of the outbreak that has killed three people, which is heading towards the waters off Tenerife. &quot;We classify everybody on board as what we call a high-risk contact,&quot; WHO&#39;s epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention director Maria Van Kerkhove told a social media event. Currently, &quot;there&#39;s nobody on board that has any symptoms&quot;, she said, adding though that &quot;active monitoring and follow-up of all the passengers and crew who disembark for a 42-day period&quot; was recommended. Van Kerkove stressed that the risk to the general public and to the people of the Canary Islands, where the Hondius is expected to anchor on Sunday, remained &quot;low&quot;. Three passengers from the ship &ndash; a Dutch husband and wife and a German woman &ndash; have died, out of eight confirmed and suspected cases of the rare disease, which usually spreads among rodents. The only hantavirus type that can transmit from person to person &ndash; the Andes virus &ndash; has been confirmed among the six cases who have tested positive, fueling international concern. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is heading to Tenerife to help coordinate the evacuation. Van Kerkhove said the United Nations health agency was coordinating with member states &ndash; in particular Spain and the Netherlands, the ship&#39;s operator, and experts around the world on the best way forward. On Saturday, WHO had briefed countries with nationals on board the ship about the plans for &quot;safe and dignified disembarkment&quot;, she said. The idea, she said, was for anyone who might be showing symptoms to &quot;immediately go to a medical evacuation plane and be taken to the Netherlands for care&quot;. Countries were organizing planes to take all those without symptoms back home, with some countries, like the United States and Canada, discussing sharing a plane, Van Kerkhove said. Everyone coming off the ship would meanwhile need to be monitored for 42 days, starting from their last point of exposure with a confirmed or suspected hantavirus case, she said. That means, she said, &quot;the clock has already started ticking&quot;.

Members of the Spanish Civil Guard wait for the arrival of the Cruise MV Hondius at port of Granadilla de Abona on the island of Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands on May 9, 2026. (AFP)

WHO advises monitoring all passengers after a deadly cruise ship outbreak, ordering 42-day surveillance and follow-up after disembarkation, while saying public risk to the Canary Islands remains low.

Everyone on hantavirus-hit ship 'high-risk contact', must be monitored: WHO

GENEVA:&nbsp;Three people believed to have been infected with hantavirus have been evacuated from a cruise ship off Cape Verde and are being taken to the Netherlands, the WHO chief said Wednesday. World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that &quot;the overall public health risk remains low&quot; from the alert over the rare disease usually spread from infected rodents, typically through urine, droppings and saliva &quot;Three suspected hantavirus case patients have just been evacuated from the ship and are on their way to receive medical care in the Netherlands,&quot; Tedros said on X. The MV Hondius cruise ship has been at the centre of an international alert since Saturday, when the WHO was informed that three passengers had died and the suspected cause was hantavirus. The Dutch-flagged ship set sail from Ushuaia in Argentina on April 1 on a voyage through the Atlantic Ocean and has been anchored off Cape Verde since Sunday. It counted 88 passengers and 59 crew members, with 23 nationalities onboard, the WHO said. To date, three hantavirus cases have been confirmed, including one of the fatalities, and five others are suspected. Wednesday&#39;s evacuation of two crew members and one other person believed to have contracted the virus took place in coordination with the WHO, the ship&#39;s Dutch operator Oceanwide Expeditions and national authorities from Cape Verde, Britain and the Netherlands, Tedros said. &quot;WHO continues to work with the ship&#39;s operators to closely monitor the health of passengers and crew, working with countries to support appropriate medical follow-up and evacuation where needed,&quot; he said. &quot;Monitoring and follow-up for passengers on board and for those who have already disembarked has been initiated in collaboration with the ship&#39;s operators and national health authorities,&quot; he added. &quot;At this stage, the overall public health risk remains low,&quot; he said.

This aerial picture shows a general view of the cruise ship MV Hondius stationary off the port of Praia, the capital of Cape Verde, on May 3, 2026. An outbreak of "severe acute respiratory illness" on board a cruise ship in the Atlantic has left two peopl

Three suspected hantavirus patients were evacuated from a cruise ship near Cape Verde for treatment in the Netherlands, while the World Health Organization says overall risk remains low.

Articles tagged with "Canary Islands"

'All of us of are migrants,' Pope Leo XIV says in Canary Islands

Americans from virus-hit ship will not necessarily be quarantined: Official

Everyone on hantavirus-hit ship 'high-risk contact', must be monitored: WHO

Three suspected hantavirus cases evacuated from cruise ship: WHO

'All of us of are migrants,' Pope Leo XIV says in Canary Islands