Trump asked if disinfectants could be injected to kill coronavirus inside the body. Doctors answered: ‘People will die.’

After a presentation Thursday, which touched on the disinfectants that can kill the novel coronavirus on surfaces and in the air, President Trump pondered whether those chemicals could be used to fight the virus inside the human body.

“I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute,” Trump said during Thursday’s coronavirus press briefing. “And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets inside the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”

The question, which Trump offered unprompted, immediately spurred doctors to respond with incredulity and warnings against injecting or otherwise ingesting disinfectants, which are highly toxic.

“My concern is that people will die. People will think this is a good idea,” Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, told The Washington Post. “This is not willy-nilly, off-the-cuff, maybe-this-will-work advice. This is dangerous.”

Trump’s question came immediately after William N. Bryan, the acting undersecretary for science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security, gave a presentation on the potential impact of summer heat and humidity, which also included references to tests that showed the effectiveness of different types of disinfectants. He recounted data from recent tests that showed how bleach, alcohol and sunlight could kill the coronavirus on surfaces.

Bryan said bleach killed the virus in about five minutes and isopropyl alcohol killed it in 30 seconds. In tests, sunlight and high temperatures also appeared to shorten the virus’s life on surfaces and in the air, Bryan said.

As Bryan left the podium without answering reporters’ questions, Trump stepped up to the mic. Before he allowed anyone to ask a question, the president offered an answer to a “question that, probably, some of you are thinking of if you are totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting.”

That’s when he asked about injecting an unspecified disinfectant into the lungs of covid-19 patients. He also raised the possibility of using light to combat the viral infection and suggested consulting medical doctors with these questions.

“So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light — and I think you said that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it,” Trump said to Bryan. “And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way.”

He continued: “And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting.”

As president spoke, one of his top public health experts, Deborah Birx, who serves as the response coordinator for the White House’s coronavirus task force, listened in a chair a few feet away from the podium.

Birx did not respond to Trump’s remarks about light therapy or disinfectant injections at the coronavirus briefing. Instead, she watched silently from the sidelines, her lips pressed in a tight line as Trump riffed on potentially testing the unproven treatments.

But other doctors stepped forward after the briefing to challenge the president.

“Please don’t drink bleach or isopropyl alcohol to remove #COVID19 from your saliva,” tweeted Dara Kass, associate professor of emergency medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.

In an interview with The Post, Kass said people who consume such chemicals often die. Those who survive usually end up with feeding tubes, a result of their mouth and esophagus being eroded by the cleaning agents.

“It’s horrific,” she said.

On CNN, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn said he believes the president’s comments reflect a question “many Americans are asking,” but cautioned people not to consume disinfectants at home.

“We certainly wouldn’t want, as a physician, someone to take matters into their own hands,” Hahn said. “I think this is something a patient would want to talk to their physician about, and no, I certainly wouldn’t recommend the internal ingestion of a disinfectant.”

Still, despite the prolific warnings, doctors told The Post not everyone is likely going to listen.

“There is an emergency department in America in the week that will probably get a bleach ingestion because of this,” Kass said. “We know that because people are scared and vulnerable and they’re not going to think it’s that dangerous because they can get it in their house.”