Coronavirus: Donald Trump says US approaching a ‘horrendous’ time
- The US president’s remarks came as the country’s cases surpassed 300,000 and the death toll passed 8,000
- China is sending more than 1,000 ventilators to New York, the US epicentre
US President Donald Trump said the United States was heading into its “toughest” weeks as the coronavirus death toll mounts, equipment shortages intensify and New York and other hotspots come into their worst period so far.
“We’re really coming up to a time that’s really going to be horrendous, probably [a] time like we haven’t seen in this country,” he said on Saturday at a briefing at the White House.
“We’re getting to that time when the numbers are going to peak, and it’s not going to be a good looking situation. I really believe we probably have never seen anything like these kinds of numbers, maybe during the war.”
The number of people infected in the US has topped 308,000 and the death toll has climbed past 8,400. New York is the pandemic’s US epicentre, with over 113,700 confirmed cases as of Saturday morning. More than 3,500 people statewide have died, and about 15,000 coronavirus patients are hospitalised. Over 4,100 are in intensive care – many, if not all, of them needing ventilators.
At the daily briefing, which lasted nearly two hours, Trump also defended the eight remaining US governors who have not implemented stay-at-home orders for their states, ignoring the advice of public health officials. And he implied that states should be more grateful for all his administration has done.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation on its website Healthdata.org estimates that, by the second week of April, US hospitals will be overwhelmed and that US deaths could reach 81,000 by July.