Vaccinated and boosted Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan tests positive for COVID while Colorado Rep. Jason Crow becomes latest member of Congress infected after Senators Warren and Booker
Democrat Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado announced he tested positive for COVID-19 on Sunday night, hours after Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker tweeted news of their own diagnoses.
The spate of new infections among Democratic lawmakers is further fueling fears that the Omicron variant causing chaos around the globe has worked its way inside the United States Capitol.
In addition to them, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced on Monday that he also tested positive for the virus.
'This morning, as part of my regular testing routine, I received a positive rapid test for COVID-19. I have been vaccinated and boosted, and I am feeling fine at the moment,' the Republican elected official wrote on Twitter.
'As the Omicron variant becomes dominant, I want to urge you to get vaccinated or get your booster shot as soon as possible.'
Crow, who recently returned from a Congressional trip to Ukraine, revealed his diagnosis just after 9 p.m. last night.
The military veteran said his symptoms were mild and credited the efficacy of his initial vaccines and booster shot for keeping him safe.
Like Warren and Booker did during their announcements, Crow used his illness as an opportunity to urge unvaccinated or un-boosted Americans to get their shots.
'I just returned from an official congressional delegation visit to Ukraine and tested positive for a breakthrough COVID infection,' Crow wrote.
'I’m thankful to be fully vaccinated and boosted and experiencing only mild symptoms (the vaccine is safe and effective).'
Crow revealed his diagnosis after returning from a Congressional delegation to Ukraine
Maryland's Republican governor announced he also tested positive for COVID on Monday morning despite being fully vaccinated and boosted
In a follow-up post he continued, 'Everyone eligible should get vaccinated and boosted to help prevent major illness and protect our community. I’ll continue to push for affordable access to rapid, reliable testing for all Americans.'
Crow is now isolating at home.
It's not immediately clear who else was in the delegation to Ukraine. DailyMail.com has reached out to Crow's office.
The number of Omicron cases in the US nearly doubled overnight from Friday to Saturday and has been detected in at least 44 states. As of Saturday morning, there were 830 cases of the new strain confirmed by DNA sequencing across the country, a 97 percent spike from Friday morning - but the number is likely much higher.
It's not known if Crow, Warren and Booker are suffering from the Omicron variant or the still-more prevalent Delta strain.
Lawmakers who normally would be back home for the legislative holiday have remained in Washington, DC in a long shot bid to score a win for President Joe Biden's agenda before the new year.
Warren, 72, was the first to announce her diagnosis and said her infection was mild and that she had both vaccine doses as well as her booster shot.
'I regularly test for COVID & while I tested negative earlier this week, today I tested positive with a breakthrough case,' the progressive Democrat wrote.
'Thankfully, I am only experiencing mild symptoms & am grateful for the protection provided against serious illness that comes from being vaccinated & boosted.'
She used her Sunday announcement to make a public plea for people who haven't yet been inoculated to get it done.
'As cases increase across the country, I urge everyone who has not already done so to get the vaccine and the booster as soon as possible - together, we can save lives,' Warren wrote.
Booker, 52, also made the public announcement only a few hours after Warren had confirmed her own diagnosis.
Elizabeth Warren revealed her positive diagnosis on Twitter Sunday afternoon, and Cory Booker announced his a few hours later
Senator Warren announced her diagnosis on Twitter and also urged others to get vaccinated amid the rise in COVID cases and the Omicron variant
Booker announced that he began feeling symptoms on Saturday but have only been relatively mild
'I learned today that I tested positive for COVID-19 after first feeling symptoms on Saturday,' he said on Twitter.
'My symptoms are relatively mild. I’m beyond grateful to have received two doses of vaccine and, more recently, a booster – I’m certain that without them I would be doing much worse.'
The lawmakers' positive diagnosis comes as the newly discovered Omicron variant wreaks havoc across the world just as people ready to gather for the Christmas holiday.
Warren became the ninety-second member of Congress to test positive for coronavirus since the pandemic began, making Booker the ninety-third and Crow the ninety-fourth.
One lawmaker, GOP Rep. Ron Wright of Texas, died after a battle with COVID in February 2021. Representative-elect Luke Letlow died of the virus a week before he was due to take office.
Warren's brother Don Reed Herring previously died last year after he had contracted the virus at the age of 86.
Herring, who served in the United States Air Force for 20 years, died on April 21, 2020 after contracting coronavirus in an inpatient rehabilitation facility in Oklahoma where he was recovering from pneumonia.
The family was told that other patients staying at the same facility were infected with coronavirus and Herring tested positive in early April but did not show symptoms for eleven days.
After his diagnosis, Warren said she spoke with her brother nearly every day, but she, his wife, and the rest of the family were unable to visit him due to the highly contagious nature of the pathogen.
'He had had pneumonia and had been hospitalized,' Warren explained.
'This is back in February. He wanted to go home after he'd been hospitalized and his doctor said, "No, I want you to just go to a rehab and just get some of your strength back". Pneumonia really takes it out of you. And, you know, he's old.
'And so, he went to the rehab and was ready to go home. He was packed up and ready to go home when somebody tested positive, and they wouldn't let him leave. And I called him every day for 11 days, and every day he would say, "I'm just fine". In fact, he said, "I think I probably had it before and I'm just too tough and didn't even notice".
Warren with her brother Don Reed Herring who passed away from COVID in April 2020
Warren is seen with her three brothers Don (left), John (right center) and David (right)
Warren is seen as a young girl with her three brothers, including her brother Don wearing an Air Force uniform
On April 15, however, Herring was rushed to Norman Regional Hospital, where he was placed in intensive care without a ventilator. He died six days later.
'And then he got sick, and then he died, by himself. That's the hard part—really hard part,' Warren said of being unable to visit her brother when he became ill.
'It's hard to process things like this because everything is happening at a distance. And human beings—we're not set up for that. We're wired to be with each other. It makes it hard.
'I lost three very important people in my life many years ago in what felt like a short period of time: my mom, my daddy, and my Aunt Bee,' she added.
'Each of them died differently. My mother, very suddenly and unexpectedly. My daddy, lingering cancer. I held his hand as he died. With my mother, I had been there on the day that she died, in the night. My Aunt Bee got sick and then couldn't recover.
'But I was with them. And I was with my brothers and my cousins and my kids. And we shared memories; we grieved together.'
Warren said that she could 'remember thinking I couldn't breathe' when she heard of Herring's coronavirus diagnosis at first but that when he didn't show symptoms for more than a week, they had begun to think about him leaving the hospital.
'And for 11 days, I'd call him in the morning, call him in the evening, and he'd tell me, "Oh, it's fine", and laugh,' she said.
'And he was irritated that he couldn't leave. And I had begun to think, "This is okay. We're going to get him out of there". In fact, I'd been talking: Would David—my other brother—be the one to pick him up, or was John going to come? You know what I mean: working on the logistics of how to get him out of there.'
The former Democratic presidential candidate added that all she could do was imagine what her brother was going through as she could not be with him or either of her other two brothers
'And then I called, and no one answered his phone, his cell. And that had happened a couple of times because he'd been doing something else. But nobody answered,' she said.
'And so, a little while later I called back, and then I got the news that he had been taken to an emergency room. In any other state of the world, I would have been there with him. We all would have been there with him. And instead he was by himself. I just kept imagining what's happening to him. Is he afraid? Is he cold? I kept thinking about whether he was cold.
'There's no one there to talk to him while he waits for the doctor. There's no one there to be with him while he receives the news.
'Then I found out they put him in intensive care. I would get the information via the nurses about what his blood-oxygen levels were. And all I could do would be talk by phone with my brothers. It's not the same. You need to touch people. We have to hug; we have to be with each other.'
Warren had not revealed a member of her family had coronavirus before she confirmed Herring's death in late April 2020 in a statement to the Boston Globe.
'I'm grateful to the nurses and other front-line staff who took care of my brother, but it is hard to know that there was no family to hold his hand or to say 'I love you' one more time.
'And now there's no funeral for those of us who loved him to hold each other close,' she said.
'I will miss my brother.'
The announcement of Warren's diagnosis comes after the rise of COVID cases that has swept throughout the US amid the recent development of the Omicron variant.
Since the start of December, both U.S. COVID cases and deaths have risen about 50 percent and the number of hospitalized COVID patients climbed 26 percent, according to a Reuters tally.
The presence of the new Omicron variant, which is believed to be responsible for the most recent surge, has so far been identified in 830 cases across the country.
Kentucky, Arkansas, Maine, Kansas and Wyoming confirmed new Omicron cases on Sunday, bringing the total to 45 states.
The surge in recent cases is a 40 percent increase from November's numbers, with 118,717 cases being reported each day.
Testing has now confirmed the presence of Omicron in every US state except for Oklahoma, Montana, North and South Dakota, Indiana, and Vermont, though the eventual arrival of the highly transmissible variant in every state seems assured.
Highly vaccinated states in the Northeast seem to be struggling the most at the moment as cold weather, waning immunity and the new variant all contribute to a new case surge.
Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island also recorded record high daily cases this week.
In the past month, 60,000 patients have been newly treated in hospitals across the country with doctors and officials urging the United States' unvaccinated population - 39% of Americans - to receive the shot in order to create space for non-COVID patients.
This increase has spiked hospitalization rates in various Midwestern states, as well as California, and there are 67,306 patients currently treated nationally.
On average, 1,290 people have died from the virus daily during the past week; the virus has killed more than 800,000 Americans since the pandemic began.
More than 50.7 million others have contracted the virus.
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