United States President, Donald Trump has told Americans to prepare for a lot of death in the coming week as the dreadful Coronavirus surges.
The novel coronavirus has infected more than 1.1 million people and killed more than 60,000 worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The US has more than 300,000 cases and more than 8,100 deaths, according to revised figures.
Trump on Saturday said ‘There’s going to be a lot of death, unfortunately.’
He said federal assistance would now be focused on areas that need it most.
“In some cases we are telling governors we cannot go there as we don’t think they need it, or someone else needs it,” he said.
“There will be a lot of death, unfortunately. There will be death. We are looking for an obvious focus on the hardest hit regions.
“Some spring up, they hit you like you got hit by a club,” he said.
Trump added: “we’re going to be adding a tremendous amount of military, thousands of soldiers, medical workers, professionals,” to help deal with the pandemic.
The military personnel will “soon” be advised of their assignments, he said, adding that “1,000 military personnel” were being deployed to New York.
Trump also said that he was employing the Defence Production Act, a federal law instituted in response to the Korean War in 1950, which allows it to requisition materials and facilities – seemingly confirming mask manufacturer 3M’s claim that it had been told by the US government not to send masks to Canada or Latin America.
“FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] has ordered 180 million N95 masks and we’re working now with 3M to see if that works out,” he said.
“But we want them to help our country. We need the masks, we don’t want other people getting it… you could call it retaliation.”
