The United States leads the world with more than 120,000 reported cases. Five other countries have higher death tolls: Italy, Spain, China, Iran and France. Italy has more than 10,000 deaths, the most of any country.

The disease has spread to other major US cities including Detroit, New Orleans and Chicago and into rural America, where hotspots erupted in Midwestern towns and Rocky Mountain ski havens.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said defeating the virus will take "weeks and weeks and weeks". The United Nations, which has its headquarters in New York, donated 250,000 face masks to the city. Cuomo delayed the state's presidential primary from April 28 to June 23.

The travel advisory from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said employees of trucking, food supply, financial services and some other industries were exempt from the measure, It said governors of the three states had "full discretion" over how to carry out the advisory.

Earlier, Cuomo and governors of the other states rejected a suggestion by President Donald Trump that he might impose a quarantine on the region. Cuomo said that would be illegal, economically catastrophic and unproductive since other areas are already seeing a surge.

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