US: Sen. Elizabeth Warren's brother dies from COVID-19

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - Don Reed, former Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren's eldest brother, has died of complications from the novel coronavirus, she announced Thursday.

Reed died Tuesday while being cared for by medical professionals, Warren said on Twitter.

A former Air Force service member, Reed was a career military officer who served for five-and-a-half years of off-and-on combat deployments during the Vietnam War, Warren said. He joined the Air Force at age 19.

"He was charming and funny, a natural leader," she said. "What made him extra special was his smile—quick and crooked, it always seemed to generate its own light, one that lit up everyone around him."

The Massachusetts senator thanked health care workers who tried to save her brother's life, but acknowledged "it’s hard to know that there was no family to hold his hand or to say 'I love you' one more time—and no funeral for those of us who loved him to hold each other close."

"I'll miss you dearly my brother," she said.

The U.S. continues to be the nation hardest-hit by the novel coronavirus. It has 843,981 confirmed infections, 46,859 fatalities and 77,064 recoveries in the country, according to data from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

The virus has spread to 185 countries and regions in the four months since it first was detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December.