President Donald Trump has expressed hope coronavirus cases were “levelling off” in US hotspots, saying he saw “light at the end of the tunnel”.

On Sunday, New York, the epicentre of the US outbreak, reported a drop in the number of new infections and deaths.

Mr Trump described the dip as a “good sign”, but warned of more deaths as the pandemic neared its “peak” in the US.

“In the days ahead, America will endure the peak of this pandemic,” Mr Trump said at his daily coronavirus briefing.

He said more medical personnel and supplies, including masks and ventilators, would be sent to the states that are most in need of assistance.

Deborah Birx, a member of the president’s coronavirus task force, said the situation in Italy and Spain, where infections and deaths have fallen in recent days, was “giving us hope on what our future could be”.

“We’re hopeful over the next week that we’ll see a stabilisation of cases in these metropolitan areas where the outbreak began several weeks ago,” Dr Birx said at the same news conference.

Optimism from Dr Birx and Mr Trump contrasted with other leading US experts, including top advisor Dr Anthony Fauci, who earlier said the short-term outlook was “really bad”.

The US surgeon general, meanwhile, warned that this will be “the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans’ lives”.

“This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment,” Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Fox News on Sunday.

The US has reported 337,274 confirmed infections and 9,619 deaths from COVID-19, by far the highest tally in the world.

Source: BBC.com