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.
In an interview with MSNBC's Joy Reid Monday night, Lance Bottoms said that she had just received her test results.
"My husband literally has been sleeping since Thursday, which is just not like him, so I decided that we should all get tested again. We were tested about two weeks ago, we were all negative, and our results came back positive today, and it’s a shock because what I’ve seen with him is not out of the ordinary for seasonal allergies, which are just about year-round allergies in Atlanta," she said.
"It leaves me for a loss of words because I think it really speaks to how contagious this virus is, and we’ve taken all of the precautions we can possibly take. We wear a mask, we’re very thoughtful about washing our hands, I have no idea when and where we were exposed," she added."
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.
