WILLIAMSON COUNTY, Texas — A 65-year-old Round Rock man whose doctors thought had pneumonia and would soon recover got sicker and sicker until COVID-19 claimed his life.
"All my life, I've only known him to be real sick once, and he's only had to call out sick once my whole life," Doug Yarbrough's son, Cody, said Thursday. "For him to just get it and to just pass away like that is unfathomable. I'm still coming to grips with it."
Yarbrough's family said he took a trip to Oklahoma in early March. That's when they believe he may have been exposed to COVID-19.
A couple of weeks later, he was on business in Midland, flying planes for an oil company, when he got sick and went to urgent care.
The doctors there thought it was pneumonia. He didn't get tested for COVID-19 until he arrived at a hospital by ambulance.
Yarbrough died -- alone -- on March 24, about five days after his diagnosis. He never got to come back to his Williamson County home.
"You just can't do anything for support, and you just have to call the doctors, you have to basically wait on updates," Cody Yarbrough said. "You can't just be there. You have to sit by the phone every four or five hours for the nurse or doctor on staff to call and give an update."
Officials will not release the name of any COVID-19 patient who dies, but it appears as though Yarbrough's death is part of Midland County's total. The day he died, Midland officials reported their first death and described the patient as a man in his 60s with no significant underlying health issues.
Williamson County officials said they have had one death -- a man in his 70s.
The county judge gave an update Thursday, saying 63 people have coronavirus in Williamson County. Eleven are currently in intensive care and eight are on ventilators.
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