A newly elected city councilor in Portland announced Monday evening that she has tested positive for COVID-19.
April Fournier, an at-large Portland city councilor, has tested positive for COVID-19, along with her husband. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
Councilor April Fournier said in a Facebook post that her family has been quarantining since Saturday and she received her test results Monday.
Fournier, 40, said she is experiencing symptoms including body aches, a headache, fever, fatigue and a cough.
“It’s no fun,” Fournier said. “We’ve been so careful. Wearing masks everywhere, washing hands, distancing. But I work with the public, my husband and oldest son work at grocery stores.”
Fournier said in an email that her husband, who works at the Portland Food Co-Op, also tested positive. The co-op announced Monday that it was closing for three days, after a worker there tested positive. The couple has four children.
Fournier works in early childhood education and will soon start a new job as an early childhood specialist case manager for Maine Behavioral Healthcare. She worked at Head Start in Lewiston until Dec. 23.
Fournier was elected on Nov. 3, defeating a three-term councilor for an at-large seat. A member of the Dine’ (Navajo) Nation, she is the first indigenous person elected to the Portland City Council.
In Maine as in the rest of the country, the coronavirus is having a disproportionate impact on people of color. Black people in Maine contracted the virus at 20 times the rate that whites did through early summer.
Through Sunday, 79 of the state’s 25,968 COVID-19 cases were among American Indian or Alaskan native individuals and 1,681 cases were among Black or African American individuals, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s unclear how many other elected officials in Maine have tested positive for COVID-19.
“Maine CDC has not opened an outbreak investigation associated with a group of elected officials,” CDC spokesperson Robert Long said. “Patient privacy laws prevent the release of potentially identifying information, such as whether an individual who tested positive is an elected official.”
Fournier urged everyone to take the coronavirus threat seriously and to follow the advice of public health officials to slow the spread.
“All I can say is I’m focusing on getting better and doing what I can,” Fournier said on Facebook. “But it’s no joke and it sucks. Please remember to mask up, wash your hands, keep physically distanced. It’s going to take all of us.”
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
