The coronavirus outbreak could reach its peak in the United States this week, a top U.S. health official said as more signs of stabilization emerged, but political leaders said a reopening of the economy may hinge on more widespread testing.

Americans spent a glum Easter Sunday largely confined to their homes by the still-raging coronavirus pandemic as the U.S. death toll neared 22,000, with more than half a million confirmed cases nationwide.

The United States surpassed Italy on Saturday as the country with the highest reported coronavirus death toll, recording more than 20,000 deaths since the outbreak began, according to a Reuters tally.

New York is nearing a plateau in the number of coronavirus patients hospitalized, a sign of optimism even though the number of the deaths in the state hit a single-day high, Governor Andrew Cuomo said.

Ford Motor Co. will produce 50,000 ventilators over a 100-day period at a plant in Michigan in cooperation with General Electric’s healthcare unit, and can then build 30,000 per month as needed to treat patients afflicted with the coronavirus.

A lot of attention shifted to the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine for treatment of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

U.S. states pleaded with the Trump administration to coordinate a national response to the coronavirus outbreak, saying patchwork measures enacted by state and local authorities were insufficient to confront the coast-to-coast emergency.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence promised that Americans would have access in the days ahead to more than 2,000 laboratories capable of processing coronavirus tests, and a leading expert said the country would launch a new phase of testing for the fast-spreading disease.

The United States is preparing for thousands of new coronavirus cases and will ask Americans returning from abroad to go into “self-quarantine” for 14 days as part of the effort to contain the outbreak, Vice President Mike Pence said.

U.S. President Donald Trump will meet with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other economic officials to weigh possible actions to stem the fallout from a widening coronavirus outbreak, an administration official told Reuters.