New York deaths from coronavirus continue to rise sharply, with the number of patients on ventilators doubling in New York City, now the center of the national outbreak, while hotspots emerge in New Orleans, Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit and early-hit states such as California and Washington continue to battle the virus. Confirmed cases in New York state rose on Friday to 44,600. More than half of those cases in New York City, as medical personnel described scenes in some of the city’s hospitals as “very challenging”. Health officials said the number of known cases in the city probably represents just a fraction of all those infected. New York’s death toll rose to 519 by late morning Friday, up from 365 the day before and up from 280 on Wednesday. “We are holding on,” said Mitch Katz, the head of the NYC Health and Hospitals system. “It is very rough, it is very challenging, but all of the hospitals are working above their capacity to meet the need.” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Friday morning that healthcare workers at many of New York City’s hospitals “are going through hell” and once again pleaded with the federal government for more ventilators. De Blasio warned New Yorkers that the situation will deteriorate further before things improve. He told Good Morning America: “There is a lot of fear. I don’t blame healthcare workers for that – they are going through hell.” De Blasio described Donald Trump’s aspiration that the US could “get back to work” by Easter Sunday, 12 April, as “false hope” and said the city was prepared to be on a stay-at-home footing for its 8 million residents at least through May. New York’s urgent calls for ventilators continued to cause tension between the state and the federal government on Friday. Earlier this week, Trump and Mike Pence claimed that 4,000 had been sent to the coronavirus-stricken state. On Friday, Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the New York state governor, Andrew Cuomo, confirmed on Twitter: “The 2k arrived Wednesday & have been deployed to the strategic stockpile We don’t know which hospitals will have the need yet-this is evolving in real time The feds gave NYS 2k – we need 30k.” “We have to be smart about what we have and be able to move on a dime,” DeRosa added. But the discrepancies continued, with Trump claiming in a tweet that “Thousand (sic) of Federal Government (delivered) Ventilators found in New York storage. N.Y. must distribute NOW!” Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said on Thursday that she was told New York had enough ventilators to meet current needs. Birx acknowledged that there may be shortages in New York City, but less-affected parts of the state “have lots of ventilators and other parts of New York state that don’t have any infections right now”. On Thursday evening, Trump downplayed the number of ventilators he thinks New York will need. The president told Sean Hannity on Fox News: “I have a feeling that a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they’re going to be.” He continued: “I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You go into major hospitals sometimes they’ll have two ventilators and now, all of a sudden, they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’” De Blasio on Friday hit back at Trump’s estimate. He said: “When the president says New York doesn’t need 30,000 ventilators, he is not looking at this astronomical growth, and a ventilator means you live or die. We have in New York City 2,500 ventilators in the last week or so. The state needs 30,000, [of which] the city needs 15,000. This is going to get worse.” Later in the morning Governor Cuomo said the surge in deaths in the city was because coronavirus patients in acute condition who had been on ventilators for the last three weeks hadn’t survived. “The longer you are on a ventilator the less likely that you are goin got come off that ventilator,” he said. Warning that the death toll in the state, but especially the city, will rise, Cuomo said: “It’s bad news, it’s tragic news, it’s the worst news.” In Chicago, city officials closed its famous lakefront to the public, after too many crowds were gathering on the shores of Lake Michigan. Mayor Lori Lightfoot told Chicagoans in a vociferous public plea: “Dear God: stay home, save lives.” Illinois officials reported 673 new known cases, including seven additional deaths. That brings the known statewide total to 2,538 cases and 26 deaths, the Illinois department of public health director, Ngozi Ezike, said. Michigan confirmed 564 new cases and 17 more deaths. The state has 2,856 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 60 deaths in the 16 days since recording its first case on 10 March. Joneigh Khaldun, the state’s chief medical executive, warned that the peak, which is centered in Detroit, is “probably a few weeks out”. In Louisiana, the number of known coronavirus cases in Louisiana rose to 2,305 on Thursday, an increase of 510 cases in a day, and a total of 83 deaths, according to the state department of health.