The pandemic has now collided with a national protest movement.

If you were out protesting last night, you probably need to go get a COVID test this week.

This is Kisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta, where like in so many American cities,

lots of people spent the weekend in large crowds in the streets.

They were protesting police violence in the death of George Floyd

and so many other black Americans who have been killed by police.

Now public health officials are worried about the protesters' health.

Because they're still a pandemic in America that's killing black and brown people at higher numbers.

Coming up, protests can change things, so can elections.

But voting is getting harder during the pandemic.

This is coronavirus daily from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers.

It's Monday, June 1st.

Atlanta mayor Kisha Lance Bottoms gave that warning on Saturday that protesters should get tested.

In the next day, she was on CNN.

Mayor Bottoms joins me now.

She said the protests in Atlanta had for a few days pushed the coronavirus to the back burner.

And you know, it's interesting, Jake, yesterday around 11.30 last night, I realized that I had looked at our coronavirus numbers in two days.

And that's frightening because it's a pandemic and people of color are getting hit harder.

Around the country, governors, mayors, local leaders now have multiple urgent and deadly crises to deal with.

To keep as many people safe as possible, to protect the rights of protesters to gather, all while managing a pandemic,

that makes people gathering together less safe.

Well, if there's going to be a lot of issues coming out of what's happened in the last week, but one of them is going to be that change of transmission will have become lit from these gatherings.

...