Russia state media reported that a military plane took off from an airport outside Moscow heading to the United States with a cargo of medical equipment to help Washington fight the Coronavirus.
Russia President Vladimir Putin offered help in a telephone conversation with his US counterpart Donald Trump on Monday, in which they discussed how best to fight the virus.
"Trump accepted the gratitude of this humanitarian aid," Interfax news agency said, citing a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, on Tuesday evening.
Trump himself has spoken enthusiastically about Russian assistance after his phone call to Putin.
This morning, the Russian channel, Russia 24, showed a picture of the plane taking off from a military airport outside Moscow while it was filled with cardboard boxes and other packages.
Meanwhile, Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont said that the US national strategic stock of medical supplies is now empty and that the state is "on its own" trying to secure respirators and personal protective equipment to combat the Corona pandemic.
"It was disturbing today to discover that the national strategic stockpile is empty now. We have got 50 respirators and I am grateful for that," Lamont told a news conference. Currently we are doing our best to search for PPE as much as we can."
The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States rose to 187,000, while 3,900 deaths were recorded. Almost half of the new deaths are in New York State, the epicenter of the infection, despite the closure of businesses.
New York Mayor Bill de Palacio called on the Trump administration to provide immediate assistance to the country's largest city.
On the other hand, the US government is speeding up efforts to build hundreds of makeshift hospitals near major cities after the health care system was pushed to its limits due to the Corona virus epidemic.
De Blasio at the Billy Jin King National Tennis Center in Queens, where a field hospital is being hastily constructed, said he had asked the White House for 1,000 nurses, 300 ventilators and 150 doctors by Sunday.
On the other hand, Lieutenant-General Todd Simonite, commander of the US Army Corps of Engineers, said on Tuesday that they were searching for hotels, dormitories, conference centers and large open spaces to build up 341 temporary hospitals.
The Corps of Engineers had converted a New York convention center into a 1,000-bed hospital within a week.
White House medical experts speculated that between 100,000 and 200,000 people may eventually die from respiratory disease in the United States, despite unprecedented orders from state governments for Americans to stay at their homes.
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