CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The year 2021 is one to remember for Amber Smith and John Meyer.
They were married on Nov. 11, 2021. This year was going to be their first celebrating the holidays as newlyweds. But a few days before Christmas, things changed. Amber had COVID-19. Amber will be out of quarantine on Jan. 1.
“The ball is gonna drop, and everybody else is gonna go for their New Year's kiss, and I'm gonna be like, 'OK, time for me to take my test'," Smith said. "Back into civilization now.”
Her husband Meyer is still negative.
“Everybody's been asking me in my family ... how," Meyer said. "They call me the COVID dodger.”
If it weren’t for COVID-19, they’d be prepping to go out for New Year's Eve celebrations.
“We would have definitely been going to celebrate somewhere just so I had an opportunity to dress up probably since we both work remotely from home," Smith said.
"Umm, I think this is the first New Year's Eve we've ever stayed in, isn't it?" she asked Meyer.
"I believe so," Meyer responded. "First Christmas and our first New Year's that we stayed home."
With a record number of COVID-19 cases surging across the Carolinas, health officials are urging people to rethink their New Year's Eve plans. Both states broke single-day records for new COVID-19 cases on the last day of 2021.
Their hope for the new year is to finally go outside, COVID-19-free.
WCNC Charlotte is part of seven major media companies and other local institutions reporting on and engaging the community around the problems and solutions as they relate to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a project of the Charlotte Journalism Collaborative, which is supported by the Local Media Project, an initiative launched by the Solutions Journalism Network with support from the Knight Foundation to strengthen and reinvigorate local media ecosystems. See all of our reporting at charlottejournalism.org.