US President Donald Trump has said that his statement about injecting disinfectants to fight the novel coronavirus was taken out of context and that he was just being sarcastic.

“I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you, just to see what would happen,” he told journalists at the White House.

Yesterday Trump said: “It knocks (the virus) 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 in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs.”

The parent group of popular household product Lysol said in a statement that “under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route)”.