US deaths from the coronavirus could reach 200,000 with millions of cases, the government’s top infectious diseases expert warned on Sunday as New York, New Orleans and other major cities pleaded for more medical supplies.

Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, estimated in an interview with CNN that the pandemic could cause between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths in the US.

“Looking at what we are seeing now, I would say between 100,000-200,000” deaths from the coronavirus, Fauci said. “We’re going to have millions of cases. But I don’t want to be held to that, because it’s — excuse me — deaths. I mean, we’re going to have millions of cases,” he added.

Fauci, a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said the spread of the virus was unlikely to slow down in the coming days. “But I just don’t think that we really need to make a projection, when it’s such a moving target, that you can so easily be wrong and mislead people,” he said.

“What we do know is that we got a serious problem in New York, we have a serious problem in New Orleans, and we’re going to be developing serious problems in other areas,” Fauci said.

Responding to a question, Fauci said it’s true the virus itself determines its timetable. “You can try and influence that timetable by mitigating against the virus, but, ultimately, it’s what the virus does. And when I start seeing this happen, then I will come back on the show and tell you, I think we’re at that point now where we can start pulling back a little, but not right now in several of the places that I just mentioned,” he said.

Fauci expressed concern at the infection rate in New York City, which is about 56 per cent of all of the new infections in the country. “That’s terrible suffering for the people of New York, which I feel myself personally, as a New Yorker,” he said.

“So what was trying to be done is to get people, unless there’s necessary travel, so, all non-essential travel, to just hold off, because what you don’t want is people travelling from that area to other areas of the country, and inadvertently and innocently infecting other individuals,” Fauci added.

The US coronavirus death toll topped 2,300 on Sunday, after deaths on Saturday more than doubled from the level two days prior. The US has recorded more than 130,000 cases of Covid-19, the most of any country in the world.

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, whose state has become one of the fastest growing areas for the virus, especially in the county that includes Detroit, called the rapid spread “gut-wrenching”.

“We have nurses wearing the same mask from the beginning of their shift until the end, masks that are supposed to be used for one patient at one point in your shift. We need some assistance and we’re going to need thousands of ventilators,” Whitmer told CNN.

New Orleans will run out of ventilators around April 4 and officials in Louisiana still do not know whether they will receive any ventilators from the national stockpile, the governor said.

Louisiana has tried to order 12,000 ventilators from commercial vendors and has received 192, governor John Bel Edwards said on CBS’s Face the Nation.

One bright spot on Sunday was Florida reporting about 200 more cases but no new deaths, with its total staying at 56.