US surgeon general warns of 'Pearl Harbor moment' as Americans face 'hardest week'

The US surgeon general warned the country on Sunday that it will face a “Pearl Harbor moment” in the next week, with an unprecedented numbers of coronavirus deaths expected coast to coast.

“The next week is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment. It’s going to be our 9/11 moment,” Jerome Adams told NBC News’ Meet the Press.

“It’s going to be the hardest moment for many Americans in their entire lives, and we really need to understand that if we want to flatten that curve and get through to the other side, everyone needs to do their part.”

Adams’s thoughts were echoed by Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s foremost infectious diseases expert.

“Things are going to get bad and we need to be prepared for that,” Fauci said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “It’s going to be shocking to some and it certainly is really disturbing to see that … Just buckle down.

“We’ve got to get through this week that is coming up because it’s going to be a bad week.”

Donald Trump issued a similar warning from the White House briefing room on Saturday.

“This will be probably the toughest week, between this week and next week,” he said. “And there will be a lot of death unfortunately.”

The president was hunkered in the White House on Sunday with no plans for a daily briefing, watching cable news and tweeting. He began the day by tweeting messages about the Palm Sunday holiday. At midday he tweeted praise for the Queen, who he described as “A great & wonderful woman!”

He also called PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor “a very biased journalist” and praised a Fox News commentator.

The US had recorded more than 312,000 confirmed cases and 8,500 deaths by Sunday morning, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University.

New York state, the worst hit by far, recorded 594 deaths on Saturday – down from 630 deaths the day before, the first day-on-day decrease since the pandemic took off.

“The apex could be a plateau, and we could be on that plateau now,” New York governor Andrew Cuomo said, adding that the coming days would make clear which direction the state was headed. Overall 4,159 New Yorkers have died and there have been 122,031 confirmed cases, Cuomo said.

From Louisiana, a developing hotspot, Governor John Bel Edwards reiterated that his state was projected to run out of ventilators by Thursday and would reach intensive-care capacity two days after that.

As of Sunday, 477 people had died from Covid-19 in Louisiana, with well over half in the New Orleans metro area. New Orleans now has the highest per capita death rate of any city in the US, according to data analysis by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

“This is a tough emergency and it’s not different here than it is elsewhere,” Edwards told CNN’s State of the Union, confirming that 200 ventilators had arrived from the national stockpile on Saturday.

On Monday, Louisiana will open its first makeshift field hospital, at the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. It will house 1,000 beds and, like other temporary sites in New York and elsewhere, is designed to ease the burden on city hospitals.

Senior infectious disease doctors, speaking to the Guardian last week, confirmed that hospitals in New Orleans have begun discussing the ethics of how to ration care should they become overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients.

As the crisis accelerates, five states have declined to issue stay-at-home orders: Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Arkansas. All have Republican governors.

On Sunday, Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson said there was no point issuing such an order because it would be ignored. “You have a stay-at-home order, tomorrow 600,000 Arkansans will still go to work,” Hutchinson said on NBC.

Fauci said states without stay-at-home orders were “putting themselves at risk”.

“I will not say we have it under control, that would be a false statement,” Fauci told CBS. “We are struggling to get it under control, and that’s the issue that’s at hand right now.” He said the rate of increase in new cases was slowing, an encouraging sign.

Adams, the surgeon general, urged people to stay at home no matter what rules are in place in their state.

“Ninety percent of Americans are doing their part, even in the states where they haven’t had a shelter in place [order],” Adams said. “But if you can’t give us 30 days, governors, give us a week, give us what you can, so that we don’t overwhelm our healthcare systems over this next week. And then let’s reassess at that point.”

Reaching again for imagery from the second world war, he added: “We want everyone to understand you’ve got to be Rosie the Riveter. You’ve got to do your part.”

Adams also advised people to wear masks or otherwise cover their mouths and noses when out in public, in addition to staying six feet apart.

“You need to make sure you’re not substituting social distancing with face masks,” he said.

Trump, 73, said on Friday he would not wear a mask despite such federal guidelines. “I don’t see it for myself,” he said, despite the fact that fatality rates are higher among older people.

His prospective opponent in the November election, Joe Biden, 77, said on Sunday he would wear a mask if he left his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

“Look, I think it’s important to follow the science, listen to the experts, do what they tell you,” Biden said. “[Trump] may not like how he looks in a mask but the truth of the matter is that – follow the science. That’s what they’re telling us.”