More than 100 calls have been made to Maryland's state's emergency hotline in the wake of President Trump touting disinfectant as ...
More than 100 calls have been made to Maryland's state's emergency hotline in the wake of President Trump touting disinfectant as a possible 'cure' for coronavirus.
It led to the state of Maryland sending out an emergency alert after the calls kept coming with many people questioning the advice on consuming disinfectant as a possible treatment to COVID-19.
Many of the states residents who dialed the Maryland Emergency Management Agency were asking about using household detergents.
President Trump raised the possible treatments using disinfectant and detergents at Thursday's White House press briefing
More than 100 people called an emergency hotline in Maryland about disinfectant which led to the agency sending out an alert warning people not to try such techniques
'This is a reminder that under no circumstances should any disinfectant product be administered into the body through injection, ingestion or any other route,' the agency tweeted.
Similar concerns were felt in New York City where health authorities are reporting that they have received an 'unusually high' number of people contacting them in the wake of President Trump's inaccurate claims.
The New York Poison Control Center which is a subagency 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.'
New York poison control saw the number of calls double from usual to about 30. Lysol also put out a warning telling people not to consume any of their products
None of the people who contacted Poison Control died or needed to go to hospital according to the Daily News.
Those contacting the helpline did so, it would appear, as a direct result of the president discussing use of the household detergents during a press conference on Thursday night, over fears that they had ingested bleach or other household cleaners.
Nine of the calls were specifically about a possible exposure to Lysol and ten were in regards to bleach.
Another 11 calls were about household cleaners in general a spokesman told then news.
Many of those who called the hotline were asking about the benefits of consuming disinfectant
Compared to the number of calls received last year during the same period, just 13 were received with no questions about about Lysol and only two regarding bleach.
On Friday, Donald Trump said he was being 'sarcastic' when he asked government officials to study the idea injecting disinfectants as a possible cure for coronavirus.
'I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen,' the president said – after his comments, delivered at length and no hint of a smile during his live televised press briefing, brought blowback.He said he wasn't being serious when he asked his coronavirus task force coordinator and another official to study the proposal. He claimed he was simply jousting with reporters – only to later say government scientists were already working on the idea.
But minutes later, Trump confirmed the idea was serious and he had asked government experts to study it.
Trump rubbed his hands together and said he had been talking about using disinfectant on the hands – something his health team has been urging for months – rather than the completely unheard of practice of injecting powerful cleansing agents into the body.
'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,' Trump said Thursday at the White House briefing.