
On March 6, Scott Maggs and Emma Metcalf enjoyed their picturesque wedding at Stanwell Tops on the New South Wales South Coast.
For their honeymoon, they went to the Maldives. It was there, while in a remote hut on the sea, that two of their wedding guests sent them an alarming message: they had tested positive to COVID-19, the virus responsible for the pandemic that has so far killed over 11,000 people globally.
With 120 wedding attendees, the couple immediately informed their friends and family who had been guests at their nuptials one week prior. They also contacted the NSW Health.
Upon learning the news, all had to go into self-isolation.
As of Friday, 37 of the couple’s guests had confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, including elderly family members and people who travelled from around the world. It is understood the cases are in relation to United States travel.
“Due to factors outside our control, our wedding has become front-page news for something we could never anticipate,” the couple wrote on their Instagram pages on Friday evening.
They said they were “eternally grateful” of the guests who “were smart enough to get tested” upon suffering symptoms, as it allowed the newlyweds to “contain the transmission of something currently spinning the world into unprecedented fervour”.
“Australia was a very different place then to what it is today,” they wrote of their wedding day.
“There were no travel bans or restrictions on gatherings and we would never have put people at risk if we had known what we know now. ”