United States President Donald Trump has suggested the
possibility of studying injecting disinfectants into COVID-19 patients or
bringing UV light "inside" their bodies to kill the deadly virus,
drawing immediate flak from American health experts who urged people not to
listen to such "dangerous" advice.

Launching
a new scientific study conducted by his department, Homeland Security for Science
and Technology Under Secretary Bill Bryan on Thursday said the coronavirus dies
at a much more rapid pace when exposed to sunlight and humidity.
"The
virus dies the quickest in direct sunlight. Isopropyl alcohol will kill the
virus in 30 seconds," he told White House reporters in the presence of
President Trump at his daily briefing on the COVID-19 situation in the country.
Bryan's
remarks left Trump wondering if there was a possibility of injecting the
chemical into a person infected with COVID-19 as a deterrent to the virus.
"I
see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute...And is there
a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning?
Because you see it gets inside the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the
lungs, so it would be interesting to check that," the US president told
reporters at the press briefing.
Trump
also raised the possibility of using light to combat the deadly viral
infection.
"So, supposing we hit
the body with a tremendous (force), whether it's ultraviolet or just very
powerful light - and I think you said that hasn't been checked but you're going
to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body,
which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you
said you're going to test that, too. Sounds interesting," Trump said to
Bryan.
Trump's incredulous remarks
prompted sharp criticism from health experts who warned people against
injecting or ingesting disinfectants, which are highly toxic.
"My concern is that
people will die. People will think this is a good idea...This is not
willy-nilly, off-the-cuff, maybe-this-will-work advice. This is
dangerous," Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine
at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, told The
Washington Post.
US Food and Drug
Administration commissioner Dr Stephen Hahn, who is also a member of the White
House coronavirus task force, warned against ingesting any disinfectants to
kill the coronavirus.
"I certainly wouldn't
recommend the internal ingestion of a disinfectant," Hahn was quoted as
saying by the CNN.
Dara Kass, associate
professor of emergency medicine at Columbia University Medical Centre, also
asked people to refrain from doing such things.
"Please don't drink
bleach or isopropyl alcohol to remove #COVID19 from your saliva," she
tweeted.
"It's horrific,"
Kass told the Post.
People who consume such
chemicals often die. Those who survive usually end up with feeding tubes, a
result of their mouth and esophagus being eroded by the cleaning agents, she
said.
Even as experts from the
medical community came forward to challenge Trump's latest remarks, Deborah
Birx, one of the top American public health experts, did not respond to the
comments about the light therapy or disinfectant injections.
Her lips pressed in a tight
line, Brix, who serves as the response coordinator for the White House's
coronavirus task force, was silently listening to Trump's comments from the
sidelines, the Post reported.
The US has reported over
869,170 COVID-19 cases and nearly 50,000 deaths.
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