New York City days away from medical supply shortage in COVID-19 crisis: mayor

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday said that the city is running out of essential medical equipment for fighting the pandemic.

During an interview with local news channel NBC on Sunday morning, the mayor said that the city is "about 10 days away now from seeing widespread shortages of ventilators, surgical masks, the things necessary to keep a hospital system running."

He criticized the federal government for not doing enough to help the city with overcoming current crisis.

"We have seen next to nothing from the federal government at this point," said the mayor. "We've made this plea publicly, privately, letters, phone calls. Very, very little has arrived."

New York state has become the hotspot of the COVID-19 outbreak in the country, with over 15,000 cases reported by Sunday afternoon, some 9,600 cases are in New York City, according to state and city numbers.

"If the president does not act, people will die who could have lived otherwise," the mayor said.

He also projected that the situation in April would "be worse than March" and "May will be worse than April" as the number of confirmed cases in the city keeps rising.

Later on Sunday, de Blasio said at his own press conference that any events, team sports and gatherings would not be allowed in New York City "for weeks, probably months."

A mandate introduced by New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo will be effective 8 p.m. on Sunday which requires all workforce of non-essential businesses to stay home in order to slow the spread of COVID-19.

For people who want to go out exercising or buy food, de Blasio asked them to "get a minimum amount of exercise, get what you need and then get back indoors."

"There is going to be a new reality in this city," he said. "And we have to understand that this is something that's absolutely necessary."