NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio Calls In Sick

NEW YORK CITY — Mayor Bill de Blasio canceled Monday his daily novel coronavirus press briefing and appearances on CNN and NY1 just minutes before the first item on the agenda was scheduled to begin.

"The Mayor woke up feeling under the weather and is going to take the day to recuperate and work from home," spokesperson Freddi Goldstein tweeted Monday morning.

"We expect to be back to our regular programming tomorrow."

Neither Goldstein nor the Mayor's press office responded immediately to Patch's requests for more information on the nature of his illness, but several reporters were told it is not likely COVID-19.

This impromptu sick day comes as the Mayor grapples with the backlash from a weeklong curfew and years of increased funding for the NYPD, now tangled in a nationwide movement against police brutality.

The animosity mounting against de Blasio has garnered national attention, with the Washington Post writing about his "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week" and a New Yorker profile posing the question, "Is Bill de Blasio the loneliest man in New York City?"

De Blasio Sunday joined a Black Lives Matter march in Harlem where he was photographed having close conversations with protesters whom he addressed, from a distance, unmasked.

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