By Daniel Dale, Nathan McDermott, Marshall Cohen, Maegan Vazquez, Em Steck and Sam Fossum, CNN
Updated 9:16 AM ET, Fri April 24, 2020
Washington (CNN)On Thursday, President Donald Trump added to his list of dubious or inaccurate coronavirus-related medical claims, dangerously suggesting at a White House briefing that ingesting disinfectant could possibly be used to treat people who have the virus.
Trump also suggested sunlight might be a treatment alternative and issued a false denial when asked why he has stopped promoting the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment, incorrectly saying, “I haven’t at all.” He referred to how “we started with a broken test” without explaining that the faulty initial test was created during his presidency, this year.
And Trump said that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden does not want to debate because of the coronavirus, though Biden has consistently expressed an eagerness to debate Trump even if it cannot be in person.
Sunlight and injecting disinfectants as treatments
After Bill Bryan, the acting undersecretary of science and technology for the Department of Homeland Security, explained during the briefing that new experiments show the coronavirus does not fare well under sunlight or heat, the President suggested that Americans who have the virus could treat it by going out into the sunlight on a hot day.
“There’s been a rumor that — you know, a very nice rumor — that you go outside in the sun or you have heat and it does have an effect on other viruses,” Trump said, before asking coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx “to speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way that you can apply light and heat to cure, you know, if you could.”
Trump then asked Birx if she “ever heard of the heat and the light” having an impact on viruses. She responded, “Not as a treatment,” before Trump asked her again to look into it.
Later, Trump again directed Birx to look into the potential for sunlight to be a cure.
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Article URL : https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/23/politics/fact-check-coronavirus-briefing-april-23/index.html