Hours after US President Donald Trump touted disinfectant as a possible 'cure' for coronavirus, an unusually high number of New Yorkers contacted the city health authorities over fears that they had ingested bleach or other household cleaners.
According to a report in Daily News, the New York Poison Control Center, which is a sub agency of the city's Health Department, took 30 calls between Thursday at 9pm and Friday at 3pm.
'To be clear, disinfectants are not intended for ingestion either by mouth, by ears, by breathing them in any way, shape or form,' New York City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot tweeted on Friday. 'Doing so can put people at great risk.'
None of the people who contacted Poison Control died or needed to go to hospital, the report said.
More than 100 calls were made to Maryland's state's emergency hotline in the wake of Trump’s controversial statement. The state of Maryland had to send out an alert after people kept calling, questioning the advice on consuming disinfectant as a possible treatment to the deadly virus.
During a press conference on Thursday, Trump suggested the possibility of an "injection" of disinfectant into a person infected with the coronavirus as a deterrent to the disease.
Trump’s bizarre suggestion came after he learned about the effects of sunlight and household disinfectants on the novel coronavirus.
Bill Bryan, who leads the Department of Homeland Security's science and technology division, gave a presentation on research his team has conducted that shows that warmer and humid temperature cuts half the life of the coronavirus. Bryan said, "The virus dies quickest in sunlight".
As a result of Bryan’s research, Trump wondered whether people could bring the light "inside the body,” and suggested that experts should find a way to inject light and disinfectants into human bodies to kill the virus.
"So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just a very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn't been checked because of the testing and then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you're going to test that, too," Trump said, speaking to Bryan during the briefing.
"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? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that," the POTUS added, even though he didn't specify the kind of disinfectant to substantiate his claim.
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