In the US, the epicentre has been New York City, with 672 deaths so far. Hospital staff have issued desperate pleas for more protective equipment.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that his city’s hospitals have enough protective equipment — but not enough of the life-saving ventilators — for only another week.
He said he had made a direct request to President Donald Trump and the US military “to find us immediately more military medical personnel and get them here by next Sunday.”
De Blasio credited federal officials with being “very responsive,” but added, “we’re talking about a sharp escalation ahead.”
From Washington state, where the disease first struck with force, Governor Jay Inslee described “a desperate need for all kinds of equipment.” He said the nation needed to be put on an essential wartime footing.
Inslee pushed back against the notion, advocated earlier by Trump, that the country could begin returning to work by Easter.
“There are some hard realities we have to understand,” he said on CNN. “Unless we continue a very vigorous social distancing program in my state, this will continue to spread like wildfire.”
Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan also described a deteriorating picture, especially in her state’s largest city, Detroit.
“We had a thousand new cases yesterday,” she said. “We know that number will be even higher today… The dire situation in Detroit is getting worse by the minute.”
Whitmer bemoaned a system that has states competing against one another for desperately needed supplies.
“We’re bidding against one another, and in some cases, the federal government is taking priority,” she said.
“It’s really, I think, creating a lot more problems for all of us.”
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