Honeymoon couple from Washington unable to return home for Christmas after having to quarantine in a Maltese hotel room

Newly weds Beth and Adam Morland flew into Malta on December 13 to enjoy a week of sunshine and mild temperatures in the resort of Mellieha.

However, after five days of fun enjoying time on the beach in the mild climate and visiting the aquarium and World War Two air raid shelter, disaster struck when they had to take their pre-flight Covid test.

Beth, 22, said: “You have to do your test two days before you are due to fly and when we both tested positive I cried for three hours. We had both been double jabbed and we had delayed coming out straight after our wedding in October in the hope the Covid situation would improve.

"We have been allowed to quarantine in the hotel room we had been using but we also received a letter from the authorities saying we could not leave our room and if we did, we would be fined 10,000 euros.

"It cost us an additional £900 to pay for the room for two weeks and we will also have to pay for our flights home.”

After testing positive on December 18, the couple now face being confined to their hotel room until at least January 2 and even then they will have to have a negative result and then look to book new flights.

SEE ALSO: Spiritualist church members dig deep to make it a happy Christmas for animal charities

Beth added: “With today being Christmas Eve, it really dawned on me that we won’t be home for Christmas. We were supposed to be going to Adam’s parents for Christmas dinner and we were visiting my grandmother on Boxing Day to celebrate her birthday.

"All we see is comments on social media about couples and friends getting ready to celebrate Christmas together. We were supposed to be spending our first Christmas together as a married couple.

“We have pets at home which I am really worried about. Our dog is being looked after by family but we have had to pay for our cat to go into boarding.”

Under the strict quarantine regulations, the couple have not been able to leave their room for six days and the hotel do not provide meals to their room.

Beth said: “We have been living on takeaways as the only way to get food is via the local version of the Just Eat app. The television is all in Maltese apart from the BBC news which is all about Covid.

"We have been downloading books to read and quizzes to play to keep use entertained.”

The one saving grace is that the couple have had fairly mild symptoms.

Beth added: “We don’t have any symptoms now but we both had a runny nose and developed a bit of a cough. In that sense we have been lucky as I wouldn’t have wanted to be really ill while in a foreign country.”

A message from the editor:

Support your Echo and become a subscriber today.

Enjoy unlimited access to all of our news and sport, see fewer ads, experience faster load times, test your brain with daily puzzles and get access to exclusive newsletters.

Your support for our journalism means we can continue telling Sunderland’s stories for generations to come. Click here to subscribe - and click here to get a snapshot of the Echo’s news and sport to your inbox through our email newsletters.