Trump deploys emergency beds
US President Donald Trump ordered thousands of emergency hospital beds set up at American coronavirus hotspots but a trillion-dollar economic rescue package crashed, as pandemic deaths soared across the globe.
"We're at war, in a true sense we're at war," Trump said on Sunday as he ordered emergency medical stations with 4,000 beds to be deployed to California and other worst-hit areas.
US has almost 33,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, with 409 deaths.
More than a third of Americans are under various forms of lockdown, including in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, but the number of infections in the United States has continued to climb.
Trump told reporters during his now-daily White House briefing on the pandemic that the federal government would pay for National Guard soldiers to be deployed in the three states to help contain the spread of the virus.
He added that the US Army Corps of Engineers would help build the temporary medical sites in New York and that the US Navy hospital ship USNS Mercy would be deployed to Los Angeles.
Highlighting the desperation inside the world's biggest economy, the mayor of New York said his city was just 10 days away from running out of ventilators.
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