By David Millward, US Correspondent

Donald Trump has announced an array of medical treatments, to tackle the Covid-19. The initiatives include convalescent plasma in which the plasma of people who have recovered from coronavirus is transfused into sick patients.

Speaking from the White House Rose Garden he said the administration is also examining tackling the mask shortage by sterilising them enabling them to be reused a number of times.

Vast amounts of equipment are being flown in by the Federal Emergency Management Agency under Project Airbridge. The first flight landed at JFK Airport in New York delivering 80 tons of personal protection equipment including more than 130,095 respirators, 1.8 million facemasks and gowns and 10.3 million gloves.

Mr Trump said that the peak death rate in the United States from coronavirus pandemic was likely to hit in two weeks.

"The modelling estimates that the peak in death rate is likely to hit in two weeks," the president said.

"Therefore, we will be extending our guidelines to April 30th to slow the spread," he said.

Trump also said he expects the country "will be well on our way to recovery" by June 1 - dropping his previous target of Easter.

Anthony Fauci, the administration’s leading epidemiologist, who earlier in the day warned that as many as 200,000 people could be killed in the US, said the figures were a worst case scenario,

“I think it’s entirely conceivable that if we don mitigate to the extent that we are trying to do, then we could reach that number.

“What we are trying to do is not let that happen.

“So instead of concentrating on the upper and the lower. We are saying it that we want to push it all the way down.”