14 family members contract COVID-19 after backyard barbecue

Fourteen members of a Texas family tested positive for the novel coronavirus after some attended a small barbecue and went on to spread the illness to their relatives.

Tony Green, a Dallas resident, detailed his extended family’s experience with COVID-19 in a personal essay published on Friday. The essay’s publication came nearly one month after his father-in-law’s mother passed away from health complications caused by the virus. Green and his father-in-law, Rafael Ceja, were both hospitalized one week earlier.

“The virus had attacked my central nervous system, and the staff stopped me from having a stroke,” Green wrote in his personal essay.

The family get-together, which Green’s parents and in-laws both attended, took place at his home on June 13. All six went on to test positive for COVID-19 during the week that followed, as did additional family members visited by his in-laws at the onset of their symptoms. Five more of Green’s family members tested positive in mid-July, on the day of Ceja’s mother’s funeral.

Ceja was placed on a ventilator roughly three weeks into his hospital stay. He remained in critical condition on Friday. Green created a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for Ceja’s medical bills last week. The campaign has raised more than $7,250 of its $10,000 goal as of Sunday afternoon.