Confirmed infections of COVID-19 in the United States exceeded 750,000 with over 40,000 deaths recorded as of Sunday while federal and state leaders are making an increasingly hard choice between ensuring public health safety and reopening the battered economy.

The coronavirus crisis is taxing New York City's 911 system like never before.

New York City's death toll from the coronavirus rose past 4,000 on Tuesday, eclipsing the number killed at the World Trade Center on 9/11. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson lay in intensive care, believed to be the first major world leader hospitalized with the virus.

President Donald Trump warned Saturday that the country could be headed into its "toughest" weeks yet as the coronavirus death toll mounts, but at the same time he expressed growing impatience with social distancing guidelines and said he's eager to get the country reopened and its stalled economy back on track.

New York secured a planeload of ventilators from China on Saturday, and Oregon was sending a shipment of its own to battle the coronavirus pandemic at its U.S. core, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. But the governor's startling plan to force hospitals elsewhere in the state to give spare ventilators to the fight in New York City apparently hadn't yet materialized, a day after he ordered them to surrender 20% of any unused supply to the National Guard for temporary redistribution. The state got 1,000 ventilators after the Chinese government facilitated a donation from billionaires Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai, the co-founders of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, Cuomo said. He added that the state of Oregon had volunteered to send 140 more breathing machines.

With refrigerated morgue trucks parked on New York City's streets to collect the surging number of dead, public health officials projected Tuesday that the coronavirus could ultimately kill more than 100,000 people across the U.S. Some states that have become hot spots warn they're running low on ventilators, while two cruise ships pleaded for Florida to allow them to dock to carry off the sick and dead.

New York's battle to keep its hospitals from being overwhelmed by the coronavirus outbreak is entering a critical phase, as officials race to get hospitals built and supplies in place before medical centers become completely overwhelmed. Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered schools closed statewide for at least two more weeks. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said he'd consider fining people who ignore social distancing rules. Meanwhile, the outbreak is taking its toll on the state's civil servants.