Mayor Muriel Bowser, sister of Washington, DC, died Wednesday of complications from Covid-19, the mayor said.
Mercia Bowser, 64, was Bowser’s older sister.
“Mercia was greatly loved and will be greatly missed because she joins the legion of angels who went home too soon due to the pandemic,” Bowser, a Democrat, said in a statement.
Mercia Bowser was treated for Covid-19-related pneumonia.
New cases reporting the disease have declined across the country in recent weeks, but health experts say the number of new coronavirus 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, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“It’s not the 300 to 400,000 we had some time ago, but we want to get the baseline really, really, very low before we start thinking we’re out of the woods,” he said.
The number of U.S. deaths due to the disease passed 500,000 on Sunday. And the next day, President Joe Biden addressed the country and observed a moment of silence for the dead. According to NBC News, more than 28 million cases were reported and more than 506,000 people were killed, according to NBC News reports.
Also on Wednesday, documents released by the Food and Drug Administration indicated that Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine is generally safe and effective against the most serious effects of Covid-19.
In two days, an advisory panel is scheduled to discuss the application for the authorization for emergency use, which is expected to be recommended.