Trump told reporters he could order a quarantine on three states, New York, New Jersey and CT, which between them have recorded at least 64,000 infections and 895 deaths.

"We'd like to see [it] quarantined because it's a hotspot", Mr Trump said. "A lot of equipment's being asked for that I don't think they'll need".

Confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the USA topped 100,000 on Friday, the day after the country surpassed China to become the global epicenter of the pandemic.

Before departing, the president offered kind words for Gov.

Meanwhile, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who spoke with Trump earlier in the day on Saturday, says that they had not discussed the possibility of a federally-mandated quarantine.

Cuomo said that despite his recent conversations with the president about the hospital ship, he had heard nothing from Trump "about any quarantine". "I don't know how that could be legally enforceable and from a medical point of view I don't know what you would be accomplishing". 'I operate on facts and data and numbers and projections. all of them say you could have an apex needing about 40,000 ventilators'. Everybody wants to vote, everybody wants to do their civic duty, but don't make me come out and vote you know 11 times, put the elections together so I can go to the ballot once.

"I don't like it socially or culturally", Cuomo said in an interview on WAMC public radio.

Trump said that while most companies were assisting in combating the epidemic, he said he may have to invoke the Defense Production Act to compel one or two companies to produce further medical supplies. After profusely thanking the men and women who worked tirelessly to construct this overflow hospital, the Governor said that he is joining all New Yorkers to "kick coronavirus' ass". "So we are going to delay that and link it to an election that was previously scheduled on June 23".

Two people who helped keep NY moving during the crisis, bus operator Oliver Cyrus, 61, and train conductor Peter Petrassi, 49, were killed by the virus Thursday, according to their union.

A quarantine "separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick", the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. "And right now, we're not there", said de Blasio.

NY so far has reported 52,318 confirmed cases of Covid-19, with 728 deaths. President Donald Trump and elected leaders in NY are clashing again over the depth of the state's coronavirus crisis.

During Cuomo's press conference, the governor announced that New York State's number of confirmed coronavirus cases now sits at 52,318, with 29,766 of them in New York City.

In total, the United States has 104,837 total coronavirus cases as of Saturday morning. "We need to protect people".

Cuomo in a news conference earlier this week asked the federal government to provide NY with tens of thousands of ventilators.

Sophia Thomas, a nurse practitioner at DePaul Community Health Center in New Orleans, where Mardi Gras celebrations late last month fuelled an outbreak in Louisiana's largest city, said the numbers of coronavirus patients "have been staggering".