US President Donald Trump sensationally warned Americans to ‘prepare for deaths’ in the coming days as the country faces what he described as the toughest two weeks of the pandemic.

“This will be probably the toughest week, between this week and the next week. And there will be a lot of death, unfortunately,” Trump said at a briefing with reporters.

He also pushed back on criticism that the federal government had not done enough to get ventilators that many critically ill Covid-19 patients need to survive.

“Fears of shortages have led to inflated requests,” he clarified.

The US has the world’s highest number of known cases of Covid-19, the flu-like respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.

More than 306,000 people have tested positive in the United States and more than 8,300 have died as a result.

White House medical experts forecast that between 100,000 to 240,000 Americans could be killed by the virus even if sweeping orders to stay home are followed.

“We are coming up to a time that is going to be very horrendous. We probably have never seen anything like these kinds of numbers. Maybe during the way, during a World War one or Two or something,” Trump warned.

The disease has killed about 3,500 people in New York alone.