US President Donald Trump has been slammed by medical experts after suggesting disinfectant could be injected as a treatment for coronavirus.

He said at his White House briefing: “And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute.

“One minute! And is there a way we can do something, by an injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that. So, that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me.”

His medical advisor Dr Deborah Birx, who is a coordinator of the US coronavirus taskforce, stood silently next to him as Trump made the suggestions.

He also said patients could be treated with ultraviolet light.

However, medical professionals immediately took to social media to hit reject the ideas. 

Professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, Robert Reich, wrote: “Trump’s briefings are actively endangering the public’s health. Boycott the propaganda. Listen to the experts. And please don’t drink disinfectant.”

While former director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, tweeted: “It is incomprehensible to me that a moron like this holds the highest office in the land and that there exist people stupid enough to think this is OK. I can’t believe that in 2020 I have to caution anyone listening to the president that injecting disinfectant could kill you.”

The President has come under fire for speaking about possible treatments before. He championed hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, as a therapy for the virus but there is no medical research to suggest this would work.

Trump additionally said at his briefing, the Department of Homeland Security had carried out research which suggests the virus weakens in direct sunlight and when it's exposed to heat and humidity.

William Bryan, the acting homeland security under secretary for science and technology, said at the briefing: “Our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have on killing the virus, both surfaces and in the air. 

"We’ve seen a similar effect with both temperature and humidity as well, where increasing the temperature and humidity or both is generally less favorable to the virus.

“The virus dies quickest in the presence of direct sunlight.”

He added that tests had been carried out with disinfectants: “I can tell you that bleach will kill the virus in five minutes. Isopropyl alcohol will kill the virus in 30 seconds and that’s with no manipulation, no rubbing.”

A Washington Post reporter asked the President if he thought it was safe to allow people to think they could go outside in the summer months.

He responded: “I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way that you can apply light and heat to cure. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t. Again, I say, maybe you can, maybe you can’t. I’m not a doctor.”

Trump asked Dr Birx if she had known the virus to be treated with heat. “Not as a treatment," she said as she explained the virus causes a fever.