A British man on board a cruise ship has been infected with coronavirus while on his honeymoon.

Alan Steele, a passenger on the Diamond Princess which is quarantined off the coast of Japan, said he had been diagnosed with the illness and was being taken to hospital.

“Just to let you all know I have been diagnosed as having the virus and am being shipped to hospital,” he wrote on Facebook.

“[I] would also like to say that at the moment I am not showing any symptoms so just possible (sic) a carrier.

“Will let you know how I am going on when possible.”

Mr Steele, 58, told the Washington Post he married his wife Wendy last month and the couple from Wolverhampton had been celebrating with a cruise on the Diamond Princess.

Mrs Steele, a 51-year-old nurse, told the paper that her husband was due to start a new job on 10 February.

“I have demanded that they test me,” she said. “I will not be separated from Alan.”

The ship’s operator Princess Cruises said 41 people on board, including the one Briton, had tested positive for coronavirus.

A further 20 infected passengers have been escorted off the luxury cruise liner for further treatment.

British passenger David Abel said he had been dining with the infected British man, who he did not name.

“He will almost certainly be leaving the ship today – real, real shame,” Mr Abel said in a video on Faceboo.

“I have no idea how he must be feeling… they’re on their honeymoon.

“He will be going off in to quarantine in a medical facility and she has to stay on board the ship because she’s not displaying symptoms.

“That’s going to be really, really tough for him so just bear a thought for these passengers who just don’t know what is going to be lying ahead of them.”

Around 3,700 passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess are being kept at the port city of Yokohama, about 25 miles from Tokyo.

Many have been consigned to their cabins, with one stranded tourist comparing the atmosphere to a “floating prison”.

Princess Cruises said the quarantine on the ship is due to end on 19 February, barring “unforeseen developments”.

The company said the 41 people who tested positive for coronavirus included 21 Japanese nationals, eight Americans, five Canadians, five Australians, one Argentinian national and one Briton.

The latest British case of the coronavirus comes after a third person in the UK was diagnosed with the illness, and is believed to have caught it in Singapore.

It has been reported that this third patient is a middle aged British man and is understood to be the first UK national to contract the disease.

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Two people in York were also diagnosed with the virus – one of them is a student at the University of York, while the other is related to them.

They are being treated at a specialist hospital unit in Newcastle.

The UK Foreign Office has advised Britons in China to leave if they are able to due to the coronavirus outbreak, which has infected more than 3,100 people and killed 637.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned of a chronic shortage of gowns, masks, gloves and other protective equipment in the fight against the spreading epidemic.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: “For the last two days there had been fewer reported infections in China, which is good news, but we caution against reading too much into that. The numbers could go up again.”

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