Americans warned coronavirus outbreak ‘could get bad’ with hospitals overcrowded and less cops on streets

AMERICANS were warned by federal health experts the coronavirus outbreak “could get bad” with hospitals overcrowded and less cops on streets.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledged the scale of the global pandemnic right here on American soil amid more confirmed cases in Asia and Europe.

“We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad,” said Dr Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Disease.

Her comments come after the Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex M. Azar II told a Senate committee the US will need as many as 300 million masks for health care workers, as well as more ventilators for hospitals to prepare.

“We cannot hermetically seal off the United States to a virus,” Mr. Azar said, before asking his peers to approve $2.5 billion in funding. “And we need to be realistic about that.”

Messonnier confirmed the “global noval coronavirus situation is rapidly evolving and expanding” during the afternoon conference.

She said “it’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country any more but a question of when this will happen.”

The disease expert revealed health officials don’t know whether the coronavirus outbreak would be mild or severe but said Americans should be prepared for whatever it brings.

Earlier, Azar asked a Senate subcommittee to approve $2.5 billion in funding to fight the outbreak after proposing cuts to the department’s budget.

“While the immediate risk to individual members of the American public remains low, there is now community transmission in a number of countries, including outside of Asia, which is deeply concerning,” Azar said, speaking before a Senate appropriations subcommittee. He said recent fast-spreading outbreaks in Iran and Italy were particularly worrying.

“We are working closely with state, local, and private sector partners to prepare for mitigating the virus potential spread in the United States, as we will likely see more cases here,” he said.

The Trump administration asked Congress for the funding on Monday.

Some senators on the subcommittee questioned whether Azar was asking for enough funding, particularly as he had requested cuts to the budget of the department’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Cuts to the CDC “are not going to help us deal with this,” said Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington. “We can not plan on the cheap or at the last minute.”

Azar also said the U.S needs to build out the manufacturing capacity for surgical masks. He said the country currently has a stockpile of 30 million N95 surgical masks, but HHS estimates suggest the country needs 300 million masks. (Reporting by Michael Erman in New York, Diane Bartz in Washington and Manas Mishra in Bangalore Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Bill Berkrot)

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