Donald Trump’s scientific illiteracy rapidly moving from risible to lethal

Injections carried out at home can also bruise, burn or block the veins and are likely to introduce new infections into the body, potentially raising the risk of contracting coronavirus. 

Disinfectant and bleach are undoubtedly highly effective at killing coronavirus – but only on surfaces. Soap also removes viral particles that have attached themselves to surfaces and suspends them in the water so they can be washed away, but it is also not advisable to ingest it because it can clog up the digestive tract.

Some scientists have also questioned whether injecting bleach or disinfectant into the bloodstream might actually do little to actually destroy the virus – apart from killing off the host, which would cause its demise in the longer term.

Professor Rob Chilcott, Professor of Toxicology at the University of Hertfordshire, said: “Injecting bleach or disinfectant at the dose required to neutralise viruses in the circulating blood would likely result in significant, irreversible harm and probably a very unpleasant death. 

“It would not have much effect on viral particles within the cells and so, in that regard, would be rather pointless.”

However there is some evidence that UV radiation from sunlight may be useful for stamping out the virus – outside the body – because similar viruses struggle to survive in hotter temperatures.

Flu, for example, survives better in cold weather because it has a fatty protective coating which degrades when it is warm. While the melting of the coating allows the virus to invade the warmth of the body, it dies if the casing disintegrates outside.

One study, by Harvard University, showed that flu on a surface survived for more than 23 hours at 43F (6C) in dry weather, but was dying within an hour at a temperature of 90F (32C).