Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia tested positive for COVID-19 this morning, he announced on Twitter.

“I have light symptoms and otherwise feel fine,” Garcia said in his tweet. “I plan to rest and work from home this week.”

Garcia, who said he is vaccinated and boosted, is currently running for the 42nd Congressional District seat.

It’s the first time Garcia tested positive since the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020, he said.

Garcia’s mother and stepfather died of COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic. His mother, Gaby O’Donnell, died in July 2020 from complications from the virus. She was 61.

“We all need to work together to ensure this doesn’t happen to other families,” Garcia told the media shortly after her death.

Two weeks later, Greg O’Donnell, Garcia’s stepfather, also succumbed to the virus after being on a ventilator for a month. He was 58.

During the pandemic, Garcia regularly appeared on national broadcast news networks to talk about the loss of his mother and the city’s efforts to protect, and later vaccinate, the public.

When the city converted the Convention Center into a mass vaccination site in early 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom said the city was a model for the rest of the state.

Anthony Pignataro is an investigative reporter and editor for the Long Beach Post. He has close to three decades of experience in journalism leading numerous investigations and long-form journalism projects for the OC Weekly and other publications. He joined the Post in May 2021.