The ship should bolster the capacity of New York’s hospitals, which are straining with patients suffering from Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Mr. Trump said that he would personally see off the ship.
“I’m going to go out and kiss it goodbye,” he said — a photo opportunity that would mark his first departure from the White House in weeks.
Hot spots are developing in the Midwest, and vaccine trials are underway.
Deborah L. Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, warned of new hot spots developing in Wayne County, Mich., home to Detroit, and Cook County, Ill., home to Chicago, during the White House briefing on Thursday.
But Dr. Birx tried to be reassuring. She said that 19 states that represent about 40 percent of the U.S. population still have fewer than 200 cases of coronavirus, and of the people with significant symptoms who are being tested nationwide, 86 percent are testing negative.
She insisted that talk of ventilator and hospital-bed shortages is overwrought.
“To say that to the American people, to make the implication when they need a hospital bed, it won’t be there, or when they need that ventilator, it won’t be there, we don’t have evidence of that right now,” Dr. Birx said.
As she spoke, medical staff in New York continued to say colleagues and patients are dying because they lack equipment in overtaxed hospitals.
Also at the briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the timeline for the development of a coronavirus vaccine was proceeding faster than usual, but would still take at least a year. He said small Phase 1 trials have already begun, and that he hoped larger Phase 2 or Phase 3 trials could begin by the middle of the summer.
