SOAVE, Italy (AP) — Italy, Iran and the United States reported soaring new death tolls as the coronavirus pandemic marched relentlessly across the globe Sunday, prompting a scramble in hard-hit regions to set up more hospital beds and replenish the dwindling medical supplies needed to keep health workers safe.

Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte went on live TV to announce that he was tightening the country’s lockdown and shutting down all production facilities, except those providing essential goods and services.

”We are facing the most serious crisis that the country has experienced since World War II,” Conte told Italians during a broadcast at midnight.

As bodies piled up in Italian hospitals, morgues and churches, and as medical workers pleaded for more help, there was no sign that Italy was yet taming its arc of contagion. Italy now has 53,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 4,825 deaths — more than all of China where the virus first emerged late last year.

The US government’s top infectious disease expert said he remains hopeful the US is not on the same trajectory as Italy in the coronavirus struggle.

Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CBS’ Face the Nation the stringent measures being put in place in the US, including travel restrictions, the closing of schools and many businesses and other social distancing, will go “a long way.”

New York City’s mayor told people at the epicentre of the US pandemic that it’s only going to get worse.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that his city is in desperate need of ventilators and other medical supplies and staff, and lambasted the White House as non-responsive. He said he had asked “repeatedly” for the US military to mobilise, and had heard nothing back.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he expects Congress and the White House to reach full agreement later Sunday on an economic stimulus package that could approach $2 trillion to address the coronavirus crisis, including US$3,000 cheques to families and other aid to last the next 10 weeks.

Several US states have ordered residents to stay indoors. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the government was “literally scouring the globe looking for medical supplies”. Health care workers from Oklahoma City to Minneapolis sought donations of protective equipment. Staff at a Detroit hospital began creating homemade face masks for workers.

Nationwide, there were at least 26,747 cases and 374 deaths as the US overtook Germany as the country with the fourth-highest number of cases. At least 38 people tested positive at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex — more than half of them inmates. Another inmate became the first in the US to test positive in a federal jail.

During his weekly Sunday blessing, Pope Francis urged all Christians to join in reciting the Our Father prayer on Wednesday at noon. ”To the virus pandemic, we want to respond with the universality of prayer, of compassion, of tenderness,” the pope said.

Francis, who began streaming his audiences online earlier this month due to virus concerns, said he would also lead a global blessing to an empty St Peter’s Square on Friday. The ”Urbi et Orbi,” blessing is normally reserved for Christmas Day and Easter.

In Britain, staff at some hospitals have complained about shortages of ventilators and protective equipment like face masks, safety glasses, gloves and protective suits.

Almost 4,000 medical workers signed a letter to the Sunday Times warning that doctors and nurses in the National Health Service would die if they did not receive better equipment and said they felt like “cannon fodder.”

“NHS staff are putting their lives on the line every day they turn up to work. The reality is that many of us will get sick. Doctors are all too aware of the possibility that they will lose colleagues, as has happened in outbreaks around the world,” the letter said.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said that hospitals would receive new stocks of protective equipment by Sunday afternoon. The government has also ordered thousands of ventilators and has struck a deal with private hospitals to use thousands of beds and 20,000 medical staff to treat coronavirus patients.

Iran’s supreme leader refused US assistance Sunday to fight the virus, citing an unfounded conspiracy theory that it could be made by America. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s comments came as Iran faces crushing US sanctions over its nuclear actions. Iran says it has 1,685 deaths and 21,638 confirmed cases of the virus — a toll that experts from the World Health Organization say is almost certainly under-reported.

Worldwide, more than 316,000 people have been infected and nearly 13,600 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University. About 150 countries now have confirmed cases, and deaths have been reported in more than 30 American states.