Washington, DC’s sister Mayor Muriel Bowser died Wednesday of complications from Covid-19 coronavirus disease, the mayor said.
Mercia Bowser, 64, was the older sister of the district’s Democratic mayor.
“Mercia was immensely loved and will be sorely missed when she joins the legion of angels who returned home very early due to the pandemic,” said Bowser in a statement.
Mercia Bowser had been treated for Covid-19-related pneumonia.
New reported cases of the disease have been declining across the country in recent weeks, but health experts say the number of new infections is still high.
“The baseline of daily infections is still very, very high,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on Sunday at “Meet the Press”.
“It’s not the 300 to 400,000 that we had for some time, but we want to get that baseline very, very, very low before we start to think that we are out of danger,” he said in the program.
On Sunday, the United States saw the number of deaths from the disease exceed 500,000. And the next day, President Joe Biden addressed the nation and maintained a moment of silence for the dead. As of Wednesday night, more than 28 million cases were reported and more than 506,000 people died, according to the NBC News report count.
Also on Wednesday, documents released by the Food and Drug Administration indicate that the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine is safe and highly effective against the most serious results of the disease.
In two days, an advisory panel is scheduled to discuss the company’s request for emergency use, which should be recommended.