Ilhan Omar's Father Dies From Complications Of COVID-19

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar revealed Monday that her father’s death was due to COVID-19 complications

With global protests against racial inequality and police brutality raging on, it can be easy to forget there’s still a pandemic happening, and COVID-19 continues to claim lives all over the world. Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar just revealed that her father has died, and that his cause of death was complications of the coronavirus.

“Surely we belong to God and to him shall we return,” Omar shared on Twitter. “It is with tremendous sadness and pain to say goodbye to my father, Nur Omar Mohamed. No words can describe what he meant to me and all who knew and loved him.” She confirmed in a statement that his cause of death was coronavirus complications.

Omar is not the only lawmaker who has had her family’s life tragically changed by this brutal disease. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in April that her older brother, Don Reed Herring, had died from the coronavirus. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar was open about her husband’s struggles with the disease, though he ultimately ended up recovering. More than 116,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19, and more than 2.1 million people have tested positive, according to Johns Hopkins University. As all U.S. states move toward reopening, infections are spiking in nearly half of them.

Despite the scientific and medical evidence that shows COVID-19 is a very deadly illness that is definitely still spreading in the U.S., Donald Trump has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the crisis. Just this week, he suggested that rising case numbers were only because testing has become more widely available, even though he’s been claiming since the earliest days of the pandemic that the U.S. has not had a testing shortage.

“Our testing is so much bigger and more advanced than any other country (we have done a great job on this!) that it shows more cases. Without testing, or weak testing, we would be showing almost no cases. Testing is a double edged sword – Makes us look bad, but good to have!!!” he tweeted.

Some states have even moved to reverse some of their reopening decisions as cases began to climb to concerning levels. The governors of Oregon and Utah slowed reopening efforts after their states saw spikes in new cases, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has threatened to reverse reopening steps in his state, as well. In Michigan, where Omar and her family are from, new cases are overall decreasing, but a number of counties are still coronavirus “hot spots,” according to the New York Times.

On social media, other political figures and the public offered their condolences to Omar and her family.