Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said in a tweet on Monday that she tested positive for coronavirus, despite being asymptomatic.
“COVID-19 has literally hit home. I have had NO symptoms and have tested positive,” she tweeted.
COVID-19 has literally hit home. I have had NO symptoms and have tested positive.
— Keisha Lance Bottoms (@KeishaBottoms) July 6, 2020
Fulton County, where Atlanta is located, has seen nearly 9,000 coronavirus cases, according to the Georgia Department of Health.
Bottoms, a rising star in the Democratic Party, has recently been catapulted into the national spotlight as the nation’s racial reckoning ignited by the killing of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody has also hit Atlanta. She is reportedly among those being considered as a running mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
And the rift between Atlanta residents who have protested for weeks against police brutality and law enforcement has widened following the shooting of Rayshard Brooks, 27, a Black man who died after he was shot twice in the back by an Atlanta police officer in a Wendy’s parking lot in June. The shooting resulted in the chief of the Atlanta Police Department stepping down and two officers involved in the shooting criminally charged.
Bottoms has issued a series of executive orders to reform the police department.
Dartunorro Clark
Dartunorro Clark is a political reporter for NBC News.