“My family and I mourn the loss of my sister, Mercia Bowser, who died this morning due to complications from Covid-19,” Bowser said in the statement. “Mercia was immensely loved and will be sadly missed as she joins the legion of angels who returned home too early due to the pandemic.”
The mayor said that Mercia Bowser – his only sister and older brother – “was a loving daughter, sister, aunt and friend” who “worked tirelessly for children, the elderly and those with heart disease. behavior until retirement and beyond ”.
Bowser said his family was grateful to medical staff at Washington Hospital Center who treated his sister for pneumonia related to her bout with the coronavirus until her death Wednesday morning.
Mercia Bowser is among 1,001 Covid-19 deaths the nation’s capital recorded on Wednesday afternoon, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The district currently has just under 40,000 coronavirus cases.
His death also comes the same week that the United States killed 500,000 from Covid-19, a sobering milestone in a pandemic that continues to ravage the country as authorities rush to vaccinate Americans to slow the spread. virus.
The mayor has already mourned the death of at least one other person close to her who contracted the virus, as she announced last March that George Valentine, who was deputy director of the mayor’s legal adviser’s office, died after have tested positive. .
“It’s devastating for everyone, of course. We’re so sorry,” she said at the time.
Bowser has helped the city weather the pandemic since its onset, declaring a state of emergency last March and later ordering some businesses to close to mitigate the spread of the virus. She also moved late last year to impose new dining restrictions in the city as cases increased around the holiday season.
CNN’s Adrienne Winston and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.
