Coronavirus: US President Donald Trump issues chilling warning
As the coronavirus outbreak worsens in the United States, graphic details about hospitals being flooded with patients have emerged.
The COVID-19 pandemic is starting to take a terrible toll in the US with 1000 deaths in a day.
Nurses have described horrific scenes inside New York hospitals as they are flooded with coronavirus patients.
“They’re so sick you lose them in a heartbeat, they’re that sick,” respiratory therapist Julie Eason told CNN.
“They’re talking to you and then a few minutes later you’re putting a tube down their throat and you’re hoping that you can set the ventilator in such a way that it actually helps them.”
CNN toured University Hospital of Brooklyn, New York, one of three hospitals in the state dedicated to dealing with the pandemic.
Dr. Robert Gore, an emergency medicine physician, said there was a level of intensity in the emergency department normally only seen in disaster zones.
The sickest patients are put on ventilators, machines to help them breath. Studies show most of them will die.
US President Donald Trump has warned “there will be a lot of death” in the US as the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the country, warning the public to brace themselves for America’s “toughest week”.
His comments came as the total number of coronavirus cases soared above 300,000, with the number of deaths at more than 8000.
About half of those deaths were in New York State alone, which has become the epicentre of the virus.
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In the past 24 hours, 630 people have died in New York, the highest single-day increase in the US since the outbreak.
New York State's coronavirus toll has risen at a devastating pace to 3565.
Fronting a press conference at the White House, President Trump said he was committed to supplying virus hot spots around the country with resources to combat the outbreak.
“We will move heaven and earth to safeguard our great American citizens,” Mr Trump said.
He announced that New York would receive “about a thousand military people — nurses, doctors, lots of other people because that's what they need”, while thousands of other military personnel would soon be sent to assist elsewhere in the US.
“They're going into war,” Mr Trump said. “They're going into a battle that they've never really trained for.”
It was also announced this weekend that New York would receive 1000 ventilators from China and 140 from Oregon.
While Mr Trump was hopeful the plan of action would adequately arm the country for the battle against COVID-19 going forward, he told Americans to expect a spike in death toll numbers.
“We are coming up onto a time that's going to be very horrendous, probably a time like we haven't seen in this country,” he said. “We're getting to that point where it's going to really be some very bad numbers.”
During the conference, Mr Trump also signalled his frustration surrounding the necessary strict social distancing measures rolled out across the country due to the detrimental impact on the economy.
“We have to open our country again,” he said. “We have to open our country again. We don't want to be doing this for months and months and months.”
Globally, the death toll is more than 59,100 according to Johns Hopkins University.
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