Doctors implore people to ignore Trump's idea of injecting disinfectant to treat COVID-19

Donald Trump.
(Image credit: Mandel Ngan / Getty Images)

After President Trump discussed the possibility of injecting disinfectant into the lungs of people with coronavirus, doctors immediately began condemning his remarks, calling them "exceptionally dangerous."

During Thursday's coronavirus briefing, a Homeland Security Department official mentioned research regarding the coronavirus and the effect light has on killing it. Trump then shared a few of his own ideas, one of them involving hitting the body with a "tremendous" amount of ultraviolet or "very powerful light." Disinfectants like bleach can "knock" the coronavirus out "in a minute," Trump said, wondering aloud if there is "a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning, because you can see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it'd be interesting to check that. So, you're going to have to use medical doctors with it, but it sounds interesting to me."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.