US President Donald Trump announced Saturday that 1,000 military medical personnel would be sent to New York to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, CNBC reported. 

“This will be probably the toughest week between this week and next week -- and there will be a lot of death, unfortunately,” he said.

It is not yet clear how and where specifically the troops will be used in New York, which became the epicenter of the pandemic.

“They’re going into war,” Trump said. “They’re going into a battle that they’ve never really trained for.”

Earlier, Donald Trump announced that he had activated the National Guard in the states of California, New York and Washington.