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“We are going to need a lot more military presence. We’re going to need a lot more help from the federal government, including medical personnel from the military, very, very quickly,” de Blasio told NBC’s “Today” show.

“I told that to President Trump. We need folks by Sunday, starting this Sunday, to get ahead of that horrible onslaught we expect in the next week or two,” de Blasio said.

In Los Angeles, the USNS Mercy, similar to the Comfort, is already treating patients. Throughout California, the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations had nearly doubled over the past four days and the number of ICU patients had tripled, Governor Gavin Newsom said.

Authorities in New Orleans were setting up a field hospital at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center – the same site where thousands of Hurricane Katrina refugees gathered in 2005 – to handle an expected overflow of patients.

U.S. health officials are urging Americans to follow stay-at-home orders until the end of April to contain the spread of the virus, which originated in China and has infected about three-quarters of a million people around the world.

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said he was frustrated to see people gathering in large groups, defying state orders and federal social distancing guidelines.

“People need to stay at home,” Adams told Fox News. “We’re working around the clock to get supplies to cities across the country – to mayors and to governors. But we are not going to supply our way out of this problem. The way we solve this problem is by everyone coming together, stopping the spread, by eliminating large gatherings, staying at home.”

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Doina Chiacu and Barbara Goldbeg; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Frank McGurty and Howard Goller)