Outbreak is inevitable.

It’s only a matter of time before the deadly new coronavirus spreads throughout the United States — and Americans should brace for the outbreak to upend their daily lives, federal health officials warned Tuesday.

“It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen in this country anymore but a question of when this will happen — and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” said Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We are asking the American public to prepare for the expectation that this might be bad.”

So far, only 57 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in the US — the vast majority people who have been evacuated from an infected cruise ship in Japan and are being held in quarantine.

But the virus has now infected more than 80,000 people worldwide — killing 2,708 — since emerging in China last year, and Messonnier warned that it won’t stay contained in the US.

“As more and more countries experience community spread, successful containment at our borders becomes harder and harder,” said Messonnier, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

She urged families, schools, businesses and communities to ready themselves.

“I had a conversation with my family over breakfast this morning, and I told my children that, while I didn’t think they were at risk right now, we as a family need to be preparing for significant disruption of our lives,” Messonnier said.

In a severe outbreak, mass gatherings would be canceled, schools would be closed and companies would have to let their employees work from home, she said.

“The disruption of daily life might be severe,” Messonnier said. “We want to make sure the American public is prepared.”

She said she contacted her children’s school district to ask about its plans for online learning, or “tele-schooling,” should the buildings need to shutter, as they did during the 2009 H1N1 outbreak. She urged other parents to do the same.

“These are things that people need to start thinking about now,” Messonnier said. “You should think about what you would do for child care if schools or day cares closed.”

Health care professionals are also gearing up for the crisis to grow. Researchers are scrambling to create a cure and officials announced Tuesday that the first clinical trial in the US for a possible treatment is underway at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

Patients who are hospitalized with the disease and show at least moderate symptoms will be eligible to join the study, which will eventually include 400 patients at 50 locations around the world.

“The goal here is to help the people that need it the most,” said Dr. Andre Kalil, who will oversee the study.

With Post wires