Maxx Cheng ‑ a 13-year-old Claremont boy from who had been isolating in his room after experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, died on July 16, 2020.
“He had this, like, dream of wanting to go to the Olympics,” Charlotte Cheng, Maxx’s sister, said.
Quarantined inside her home, Cheng said her younger brother began to feel sick on the Fourth of July.
“Nausea, vomiting, chest pains,” she said. “That list that pops up, a little bit, on that initial search, he had all of those symptoms.”
On July 9, Maxx’s mother took him to get tested for COVID-19. That test came back negative.
“His symptoms matched, but then the test came out negative,” Cheng said. “So we were a little bit confused.”
Despite the test result, Maxx continued to isolate in his bedroom due to his ongoing symptoms.
“We went to go check up on him, like we normally do,” Cheng said. “He wasn’t answering. We found him passed out in the room.”
Maxx died on the night of July 16, 2020, after days of seeming improvement over the past week.
“There was almost no cough,” Cheng said. “The fever had gone down three days before he passed.”
“Somebody who is athletic, somebody who is on the swimming team who is so energetic and active dies from it, it changes the conversation,” Nichole Weinstein, a family friend said.
The Cheng family said they had been very careful, even before Maxx got sick, so they didn’t know where he could have contracted the illness.