Coronavirus deaths soared. New York City playgrounds were targeted for shutdown to help slow an outbreak projected to grow worse for another month. Overtaxed hospitals began transferring patients north of the city. And residents near one struggling hospital have become all too used to ambulance sirens. New York’s COVID-19 death count more than doubled in 72 hours to 1,941.

The mounting death toll from the virus outbreak in the United States had it poised Tuesday to overtake China’s grim toll of 3,300 deaths, with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo saying up to 1 million more healthcare workers were needed. “Please come help us,” he urged.

An emergency hospital was erected in tents in Central Park Sunday as the New York City’s staggering toll of coronavirus deaths rose to at least 776, pushing the statewide count past 1,000.

Bracing the nation for a coronavirus death toll that could exceed 100,000 people, President Donald Trump extended restrictive social distancing guidelines through April, bowing to public health experts who presented him with even more dire projections for the expanding coronavirus pandemic.

Senior US scientist Dr. Anthony Fauci issued a cautious prediction Sunday that the novel coronavirus could claim as many as 200,000 lives in the United States, as state and local officials described increasingly desperate shortages in hard-pressed hospitals.

The United States on Thursday took the grim title of the country with the most coronavirus infections and reported a record surge in unemployment as world leaders vowed $5trn to stave off global economic collapse.

The number of people without jobs in the US has surged to a record high as the economy goes into lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly 3.3 million people registered to claim unemployment benefits for the week ended 21 March, according to Department of Labour data. The previous record was set in 1982, when unemployment claims were just 695,000.

US senators and Trump administration officials have reached an agreement on a massive economic stimulus bill to alleviate the economic impact of the coronavirus outbreak, the negotiators said on Wednesday. The Senate will vote on the $2-trillion package later in the day and the House of Representatives is expected to follow suit soon after.

As cases of coronavirus rise, President Donald Trump said that he wants to reopen the country for business in weeks, not months, and claimed, without evidence, that continued closures could result in more deaths than the pandemic itself.

The United States could become the global epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, the World Health Organisation warned on Tuesday. WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris said there had been a “very large acceleration” in coronavirus infections in the US which had the potential of becoming the new epicentre.