The sister of Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser died Wednesday of complications from the coronavirus disease Covid-19, the mayor said.
Mercia Bowser, 64, was the older sister of the Democratic mayor of the district.
“Mercia was loved immensely and will be missed greatly, as she joins the legion of angels who have gone home too soon due to the pandemic,” Bowser said in a statement.
Mercia Bowser had been treated for Covid-19-related pneumonia.
New reported cases of the disease have been in decline across the nation 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,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Sunday on “Meet the Press.”
“It’s not the 300 to 400,000 that we had some time ago, but we want to get that baseline really, really, really low before we start thinking that we’re out of the woods,” he said on the program.
Feb. 24, 202101:52
On Sunday, the United States saw the number of deaths from the illness pass 500,000. And the following day, President Joe Biden addressed the nation and held a moment of silence for the dead. As of Wednesday evening, more than 28 million cases have been reported and more than 506,000 people have died, according to NBC News’ count of reports.
Also Wednesday, documents released by the Food and Drug Administration indicate that Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine is overall safe and highly effective against the most severe outcomes of the illness.
In two days, an advisory panel is scheduled to discuss the company’s application for emergency use, which is expected to be recommend.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
