Meals left at the door, talks with wife by cell. Life of Tarrant’s first COVID-19 patient
Meals are left at his bedroom door. He talks to his wife by cellphone. Tarrant County’s first coronavirus patient has left a hospital but is in isolation at home.
Father Robert Pace, a Trinity Episcopal Church priest, was released from a hospital on March 11.
He remains in a bedroom at his home, Sarah Martinez, a spokeswoman for the church, wrote Tuesday in a statement.
Pace’s wife, the Rev. Dr. Jill Walters, is also at home, but has no direct contact with her husband. She is on self-quarantine. Walters is the early childhood and lower school chaplain for All Saints’ Episcopal School of Fort Worth.
She has tested negative for the COVID-19 virus. Walters and her husband are checking in regularly with the doctors supervising his care, Martinez wrote.
“I am feeling better and getting stronger every day,” Pace wrote Tuesday in an email.
Church members who were present at a Lent supper will end their self quarantine on Wednesday. Martinez said she had not heard of reports that anyone felt ill.
Pace was diagnosed with the virus after he attended The Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes annual conference Feb. 19-22 in Louisville, Kentucky.
Trinity Episcopal Church canceled its Sunday service and closed its building after Pace tested positive for the virus.
A senior citizen who lived at the Texas Masonic Retirement Center in Arlington died on Sunday of COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus. The man was the first person to die of the virus in Tarrant County, its public health department said Tuesday.
