President Donald Trump on Saturday said 1,000 military personnel will deploy to New York City to help COVID-19 response efforts.

Trump's hometown has been reeling with the highest number of infections in the country. As of Saturday, NYC reported more than 63,000 cases. Across the state, more than 100,000 people have tested positive for coronavirus. 

Health care workers say they are overwhelmed by supply and test shortages and the overwhelming number of people requiring medical attention. Many have complained that they don't feel safe and described chaos in emergency rooms all over the city.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Saturday that he has a responsibility to ensure that testing for coronavirus in the state is improved and expanded.

"Let me just acknowledge on the outset that the testing space has been a challenging one for us and I own that," Newsom said at a news conference. "I have a responsibility as your governor to do better and to do more testing in the state of California." 

He announced a changed approach to the coordination and organization of testing for the virus statewide.

After it was broadly publicized that 59,500 tests of more than 126,700 in California still had no results, Newsom said the state focused on bringing that number down and that the backlog is now approximately 13,000 tests. 

California has 237 deaths, about 2,300 hospitalizations and 1,008 people in intensive care from coronavirus, Newsom said. 

Houston Astros pitcher Justin Verlander and his wife, model Kate Upton, said they are going to donate his weekly MLB paychecks to various charities helping people affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Verlander said Saturday in an Instagram video message with his wife, model Kate Upton, that Major League Baseball announced that players will continue to receive their paychecks while the season is suspended due to the virus.

He and Upton, who married in 2017, said they will donate the money to a different charity each week, "so that we can support their efforts and highlight the great work they're doing during the COVID-19 crisis."

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President Donald Trump said that he was not planning to postpone the Republican National Convention in Charlotte schedule for August. 

“We are having the convention at the end of August,” Trump said Saturday at a press briefing. “I think we are going to have a great convention,” he continued, adding that there was no contingency plan.

The Democrats announced earlier in the week that they would delay their convention in Milwaukee from July 1 to Aug. 17. 

New York City Fire Department first responders on Friday night serenaded medical workers outside NYU Langone Health, an academic medical center in Manhattan.

Sandra Pérez Baos, a postdoctoral researcher at the New York University facility, tweeted a video of the event, which she later said took place at 7 p.m.

Ladder trucks, rescue rigs and ambulances are lined up, emergency lights flashing, sirens blaring, and air horns sounding — a show of appreciation for an overwhelmed system — as mask-wearing medical workers watch and listen.

On Friday, the city transmitted an emergency alert to cellphones to ask licensed health care workers to volunteer to work at coronavirus-impacted medical facilities. The virus-related death toll in the city Saturday was nearly 1,900.

President Donald Trump warned Saturday that the country was headed for a difficult week.

“This will be the toughest week,” Trump said at the daily White House coronavirus press briefing. “There will be a lot of death, unfortunately.”

Trump claimed that his allocation of resources to states most in need would lead to a "lot less death than if this wasn't done."

“In some cases we are telling governors we can't go there because we don't think you need it and we think someplace else needs it. And pretty much so far we’ve been right about that and we’ll continue to do it," Trump said.

Nearly every state is stretched thin on emergency resources needed to fight the pandemic. Trump has been criticized for directing resources to states that are politically valuable to him, such as Florida, rather than prioritizing harder hit areas like New York, where ventilators are expected to run out within days and hospitals are already out of personal protective equipment. 

The mayor of a New Jersey city that has been hit hard by coronavirus says his community needs the same supplies and equipment as other hot spots but lacks "the power or resources to compete with New York City."

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka told MSNBC, "We should not be competing on the marketplace for testing, gowns and masks in this difficult, difficult time."

"I believe there needs to be a national response, a uniform national response, so everybody can get a tally of what they need of resources, and people need to be given those resources," said Baraka, whose city of about 280,000 has a median household income of about $35,000 and a 28 percent poverty rate. 

Essex County, where Newark is located, has 3,584 positive coronavirus cases and 155 related deaths, according to the New Jersey Department of Health.

"We have a lot of people not being tested, folks depending on 911, calling 911, overwhelming 911 and the hospital," Baraka said. "We also treat the emergency rooms as a primary care physician, which has escalated these problems in these communities."

The total number of coronavirus cases in the United States has climbed to more than 300,000, with the number of deaths surpassing 8,000. 

New York state has the highest number of cases in the country with 113,704. New Jersey is second, with over 34,000. 

Both states also have the highest numbers of fatalities in the country. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said Saturday that in the past 24 hours the state has seen an additional 200 deaths, bringing the total to 846.

More than 3,500 people have died from the virus in New York. 

The U.S. in total has 300,092 cases and 8,078 fatalities.