President Trump says US to deploy 1,000 military personnel to New York City to battle coronaviru

https://news.yahoo.com/president-trump-says-us-deploy-205827116.html

Michael Collins
,USA TODAY•April 4, 2020

President Donald Trump said Saturday he is deploying 1,000 medical personnel to New York City to help battle the coronavirus.

Personnel to be deployed will include doctors, nurses, respiratory specialists and others, Trump announced at a White House news briefing on Saturday.

“We've been doing it, but now we're doing it on a larger basis,” Trump said.

Trump did not say from which branches of the services the officials will be deployed. But he said they will be sent Sunday and Monday to New York, “where they’re needed most.”

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Trump’s decision to deploy additional military personnel comes as the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus marched to another record-setting pace early Saturday, with nearly 1,200 deaths in 24 hours as federal emergency workers tried to answer desperate pleas for respirators from dozens of states.

The number of confirmed cases in the U.S. has now topped 297,600, and 8,000 deaths have been reported. Worldwide, more than 1.7 million cases have been confirmed and 63,000 deaths reported.

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Meanwhile, New York said it is getting 1,000 life-saving ventilators from China to aid its battle against the virus. The ventilators were expected to arrive Saturday at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced at a news conference on Saturday. The Chinese government facilitated the effort connected to Alibaba, the massive online retailer in China, Cuomo said.

Another 500 of the breathing machines will be moved from upstate New York to downstate hospitals being hit hardest by the disease, Cuomo said.

New York has been at the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis in the U.S. Cuomo has said he needs 30,000 ventilators "at a minimum" to meet the peak of the outbreak in his state in a couple of weeks. Trump has said he doesn’t believe the state needs that many.