A partygoer who warned people to take coronavirus seriously after attending a party has died a day after posting about his regret on social media.
Thomas Macias, 51, attended a barbecue near his home in Lake Elsinore, about 70 miles from Los Angeles last month, and shortly after, he began to feel unwell.
Watch a full news report on the incident below:His condition deteriorated to the point that he posted a poignant message on Facebook on June 20, per CNN, warning his family and friends about the dangers of the coronavirus.
"I went out a couple of weeks ago... because of my stupidity I put my mom and sisters and my family's health in jeopardy," he wrote. "This has been a very painful experience. This is no joke. If you have to go out, wear a mask, and practice social distancing... Hopefully, with God's help, I'll be able to survive this."
Macias was at risk of complications from the coronavirus because he suffered from diabetes, with doctors warning that people with this condition as well as chronic lung disease and asthma are at particular risk, per the World Health Organisation.
The 51-year-old's brother-in-law Gustavo Lopez told CNN that Macias had barely left his home since the pandemic began but because he was a particularly social person, he decided to take a risk when some of the state's restrictions were lifted.
"Everywhere he went he made friends instantly," Lopez said. "He was missing his friends and missing his family. So as soon as they lifted some of the restrictions he felt free and he, unfortunately, went to this get-together to be with his friends and then this was the result."
After the party, Macias was contacted by a friend who said he attended knowing that he had coronavirus, but he thought that he wasn't infectious because he didn't have any symptoms.
"Our understanding is that a gentleman had called him and said 'hey I was at the party, I knew I was positive. I didn't tell anybody,'" Lopez said. "I think the gentleman was regretting not telling everybody, and he was calling people who were at the party to recommend they get tested."
According to Lopez, Macias blamed himself when he discovered this information, and he was one of around a dozen partygoers from the barbeque who went on to test positive.
The 51-year-old was tested for the coronavirus on June 15 and received his positive result three days later. He passed away on June 21, with NBC reporting that Riverside County Office of Vital Records confirmed his cause of death.
Per the John Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, at the time of writing, there have been 10,874,146 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus worldwide, and a global death toll of 521,355.