The nation's leading infectious disease doctor insisted he and President Trump share an understanding regarding which drugs could treat the coronavirus in the United States.

"There is an issue here of where we're coming from," Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday on CBS's Face The Nation. "The president has heard, as we all have heard, what I call anecdotal reports that certain drugs work."

This week, Trump suggested a malaria drug called hydroxychloroquine was one of several that could be used as a treatment.

“I think without seeing too much, I'm probably more of a fan of that,” Trump said. “And we all understand what the doctor said is 100% correct.”

What Trump was trying to express, Fauci said Sunday, "was the hope that if they might work, let's try and push their usage."

Fauci said he does not disagree with the fact that "anecdotally, they might work," but he wants to test and prove what actually works.

"I was taking a purely medical, scientific standpoint, and the president was trying to bring hope to the people," Fauci said. "I think there's this issue of trying to separate the two of us. There isn't fundamentally a difference there. He's coming to it from a hope, layperson standpoint. I'm coming from it from a scientific standpoint."

More than 26,000 cases of the virus have been confirmed in the U.S., leading to at least 340 deaths as of Sunday morning.

