Coronavirus: America faces new ‘Pearl Harbor, 9/11’

America faces its ‘Pearl Harbor’ moment this week as it braces for a frightening surge of coronavirus deaths, the US Surgeon General has warned

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci at the White House in Washington. Picture: AFP

America faces its “Pearl Harbor” moment this week as the nation braces for a frightening surge of coronavirus deaths, US Surgeon General Jerome Adams has warned.

His grim forecast came as the top US infectious diseases authority, Anthony Fauci, admitted the experts were “struggling” to get the virus under control and that the worst was still to come.

“The next week is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment,” Dr Adams said. “It’s going to be our 9/11 moment. Only it’s not going to be localised. It’s going to be happening all over the country ... it’s going to be the hardest moment for many Americans in their entire lives.”

Donald Trump also repeated his warning that the US was facing a period where deaths would increase sharply, tweeting: “A rough two weeks are coming up!”

His comments came as the number of deaths in the US surged past 9000 to 9441, with more than 331,000 infections across the country. In the virus hotspot of New York city and state another 594 people died in 24 hours, taking the state’s death toll to 4159 with more than 122,000 cases.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo again warned that his state did not have enough ventilators to cope with the expected surge of new patients in the next few days.

He said New York was also experiencing a shortage of medical staff with a growing number falling sick or needing back-up as hospitals across New York City reach capacity. But he did say there appeared to be a “light plateauing” in the number of dead after the state recorded 36 fewer deaths than the previous day and he hoped that the state might be approaching the apex of its death rate. But he said it was hard to tell whether worse was still to come.

“We won’t know for the next few days, does it go up, does it go down?” Mr Cuomo said. “We’re all watching a movie. We’re waiting to see what the next scene is. And as the movie unfolds, you start to understand the story better and better.”

Dr Fauci said he believed the US may start to see a flattening in the rate of new infections in a week or so, but in the meantime deaths would continue to escalate sharply.

“This is going to be a bad week,” he said. “Unfortunately, if you look at the projection of the curves, of the kinetics of the curves, we’re going to continue to see an escalation. We should hope that within a week, maybe a little bit more, we’ll start to see a flattening out of the curve and coming down.

“I’m not saying we have it under control. That would be a false statement. We are struggling to get it under control.”

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Picture: AFP

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, who warned in 2015 about the danger of a pandemic, said COVID-19 was a “nightmare scenario” but it was possible to keep deaths well below the 100,000 to 240,000 predicted in the US by the White House.

“This is a nightmare scenario because human-to-human transmittal respiratory viruses can grow exponentially,” he said. “And you know, if we had kept on going to work, travelling like we were, you know, that curve would never bend until you had the majority of the people infected and then a massive number seeking hospital care and lots of lots of deaths.

“(But) if we do the social distancing properly, we should be able to get out of this with the death number well short of that.”

Orthodox Jewish men move a coffin at a funeral home in the Borough Park neighbourhood of New York, which has seen a surge in COVID-19 patients. Picture: AFP

A sharp rise in infections and deaths is also expected this week in other coronavirus hotspots such as Louisiana and Michigan, while Chicago, parts of Colorado and Washington DC are also experiencing steep rises in infections and deaths.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said his state could run out of ventilators as soon as Friday (AEDT). “We definitely see we will exceed our ventilator capacity at some point,” Mr Edwards said.

New Orleans has had the fastest rate of infections in the country, with many linked to the city’s decision to proceed with the Mardi Gras in late February.

Illinois Governor Jay Pritzker, whose state includes Chicago, hit out at Mr Trump after the President accused governors of asking for too much from the federal government. “The President does not understand the word ‘federal’,” said Mr Pritzker, a Democrat. “If they had started in February building ventilators, getting ready for this pandemic, we would not have the problems that we have today and, frankly, very many fewer people would die.”

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky news Australia