An elderly couple who had been married for 60 years have died within hours of each other after contracting coronavirus.

Great-grandparents Pat Howells, 80, and husband Bryn, 86, each died at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital in South Wales on Monday.

The couple, described as “pillars of the community”, contracted Covid-19 despite spending four weeks in self-isolation at their home in Gelli, a village in the Rhondda Fawr valley.

Ms Howells first started to feel unwell on 4 April, with her husband developing similar symptoms shortly after.

They died on Easter Monday just 17 hours apart. Grandson Elliot Howells said their family were trying to take comfort from the fact the couple were in close proximity at the time of their deaths.

“We are trying to take some comfort in the fact they died together, after 60 years of joyous marriage,” he​ told Wales Online.

“Nanny, especially, was so well. We always said she was a very young 80-year-old, and she had decades left in her.

“It is just horrific and such a shock. Just over a week ago, I spoke to her and she was pressure washing her garden and painting her hallway.

“When she first started feeling ill she thought it was because she had overdone it a bit.”

Mrs Howells moved to South Wales as a child evacuee from Birmingham during the Second World War. She later became a lunchtime supervisor at Gelli Primary School and stayed there beyond her retirement age.

Mr Howells was a financial advisor for Legal & General, though he was also known in the community for singing with the Treorchy Male Voice Choir.

Their grandson said the couple's home was “full of love” and always had “an open door”, adding they took great pleasure in celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary only a few months ago.

Mrs Howells was said to have been thrilled to receive a card from the Queen to mark the occasion.

Elliot described it as “heartbreaking” that family could not visit them visit the pair hospital due to measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19, but said NHS staff had been “brilliant” and provided constant updates on the couple’s condition.