“34 other passengers had departed the vessel, which first sailed from Argentina in March with stops in the Antarctic and other locations before heading north to waters off Cape Verde west of Africa”

“Four patients remained hospitalised on Friday in South Africa, the Netherlands and Switzerland”

“Oceanwide, the cruise operator, said on Thursday there were no people with symptoms of a possible infection remaining on the vessel”

“The MV Hondius was en route on Friday to Tenerife in the Canary Islands and was expected to dock there early on Sunday”

“Oceanwide said 17 US citizens were aboard”

“Health officials will meet passengers returning to the US and transport them on a “medical repatriation flight” to Omaha, where they will be quarantined at the University of Nebraska, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday”

“A 32-year-old woman in the southeastern Spanish province of Alicante was diagnosed with symptoms consistent with a hantavirus infection”

“She was briefly sitting on a plane two rows behind a Dutch woman who had contracted the virus on the MV Hondius”

“The woman left the flight in Johannesburg feeling ill before it took off on April 25 and later died at a hospital”

“A British man was suspected of having the disease on Britain’s Tristan da Cunha”

“Officials said he was a passenger on the MV Hondius, which was at the island from April 13 to April 15”

“The three people who have died after the outbreak were a Dutch couple and a German”

“Four others confirmed to be infected — two Britons, a Dutch person and a Swiss national — were still being treated at hospitals in the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland”

“Tristan da Cunha, home to only about 200 people, is halfway between South Africa and South America”

“It is the world’s remotest inhabited island, more than 2,400km and a six-day boat ride from St Helena”

“The CDC has classified the hantavirus outbreak as a “level 3” emergency response, the lowest level of emergency activation”