The Federal Emergency Management Agency is said to be preparing for Donald Trump to declare coronavirus a national emergency.
An ‘infectious disease emergency declaration’ would allow FEMA to free up disaster relief funding and provide federal assistance, NBC News reports.
The president would have to enact the 1988 Stafford Act, last used by Bill Clinton in 2000 in New York and New Jersey for outbreaks of the West Nile virus.
It would mean mobile hospitals and military transport could be provided by FEMA using the $34 billion they have in their disaster relief fund.
President Donald Trump, right, speaks to the press during a meeting with Colombian President Ivan Duque in the Oval Office on Monday. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is said to be preparing for Trump to declare coronavirus a national emergency
Michael Coen, who was FEMA chief of staff during the Obama administration, told NBC: ‘To me this is another indication that the president and the White House are finally aware of the gravity of the situation. They need to consider all tools available to them and have contingencies for action.’
Tim Manning, a FEMA deputy administrator under President Barack Obama, added: ‘I actually find this reassuring. I hope this discussion has been happening continuously over the last couple of months.’
Florida, parts of California and Washington state have all already declared a state of emergency over the outbreak.
FEMA spokesperson Lizzie Litzow said: ‘At this time, there isn’t anything additional to the HHS public health emergency.’
New York confirmed its first coronavirus case on Sunday as a female healthcare worker in her 30s who returned from Iran last week and is now being quarantined in her Manhattan home.
It came as a New York doctor warned coronavirus cases in the United States will surge into the thousands by next week.
Dr Matt McCarthy, who is a staff physician at the busy New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, claimed he doesn’t have the tools to properly care for patients because of the lack of coronavirus tests being made available to hospitals.
Panic buying hit New York and other parts of the country over the weekend with anxious shoppers clearing supermarket shelves as they stock up on food and medical supplies. Pictured is a Costco in Brooklyn on Monday
Shoppers at Costco in Brooklyn panick buying Water, tissue and Clorox product
Scott Gottlieb, who is the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, also told CNBC that three critical weeks were lost in trying to contain the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. because of the faulty tests.
Over the weekend, authorities confirmed that two people had died in Washington state after contracting coronavirus.
The total number of US cases has now soared to 91. The spread of the disease, which began in China, has now seen more than 89,000 cases worldwide and over 3,000 fatalities.
The coronavirus appeared poised for a spike in the United States in part because of more testing to confirm cases.
Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis disclosed late Sunday that two people had become the first in his state to test positive and ordered his top health officer to declare a statewide public health emergency.
Two people who returned to Rhode Island from a trip to Europe have also tested positive for coronavirus.
A cluster of cases is centered on a nursing home near Seattle.
The Seattle and King County public health department confirmed late Sunday that a man in his 70s who was a resident of the LifeCare long-term care facility in Kirkland and had coronavirus had died the day before.
Healthcare workers transport a patient on a stretcher into an ambulance at Life Care Center of Kirkland in Kirkland, Washington. Dozens of staff and residents at Life Care Center of Kirkland are reportedly exhibiting coronavirus-like symptoms, with two confirmed cases associated with the nursing facility reported so far
A woman wears a face mask as she waits on the subway after the first confirmed case of coronavirus was annoucned in New York
On Saturday, the department had reported the first death of a coronavirus patient in the United States, a man in his 50s who was living in Kirkland – the same city where the nursing home is located.
Six of the 10 confirmed coronavirus cases in Washington state have been residents or workers at LifeCare.
Trump administration officials worked on Sunday to soothe nerves and calm fears that a global recession was looming, arguing that the public and media were over-reacting and saying that stocks would bounce back because the American economy was fundamentally strong.
It came as panic buying hit New York and other parts of the country over the weekend with anxious shoppers clearing supermarket shelves as they stock up on food and medical supplies.