President Donald Trump is expected to address the nation at 3 p.m. HST. Watch live in the player above.

After days of trying to downplay the threat, Trump announced he would be delivering a prime-time Oval Office address to the nation Wednesday on the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The swiftly mounting effort to contain the outbreak and financial fallout intensified on a grueling day as the number of confirmed cases of the infection topped 1,000 in the U.S. and the World Health Organization declared that the global crisis is now a pandemic. Communities nationwide canceled public events in the hopes of halting the spread of the infection.