“My family and I are mourning the loss of my sister, Mercia Bowser, who passed away this morning due to complications related to Covid-19,” Bowser said in the statement. “Mercia was immensely loved and will be sorely missed, as she joined the legion of angels who returned home very early due to the pandemic.”
The mayor said Mércia Bowser – his only sister and older brother – “was a loving daughter, sister, aunt and friend” who “worked tirelessly for children, the elderly and people with behavioral disorders until her retirement and afterwards”.
Bowser said his family was grateful to the Washington Hospital Center medical staff, who treated his sister with coronavirus-related pneumonia until her death on Wednesday morning.
Mercia Bowser is among the 1,001 deaths in Covid-19 that the nation’s capital recorded on Wednesday afternoon, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The district currently has nearly 40,000 cases of coronavirus.
His death also occurred in the same week that the United States reached 500,000 deaths from Covid-19, a worrying milestone in a pandemic that continues to devastate the country as officials rush to vaccinate Americans to slow the spread of the virus.
The mayor has already mourned the death of at least one person close to her who contracted the virus, as she announced last March that George Valentine, who served as deputy director of the Mayor’s Legal Advisory Office, died after a positive test.
“It is devastating for everyone, of course. We are sorry, ”she said at the time.
Bowser has helped drive the city through the pandemic since its inception, declaring a state of emergency last March and subsequently ordering the closure of some companies to mitigate the spread of the virus. She also moved in late last year to impose new restrictions on restaurants in the city, as cases increased during the holiday season.
CNN’s Adrienne Winston and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.
