CNN anchor Chris Cuomo has sparked outrage by telling his viewers to 'go straight ethnic' when it comes to cleaning surfaces to combat coronavirus.

The presenter, 49, was discussing the pandemic with CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta on Thursday night.

There have been more than 1,700 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the US and 41 deaths so far.

Discussing the deepening crisis, Cuomo asks: 'How long can the thing live, like, on my desk?'

Dr Gupta replies: 'Well, I'm going to give you the answer, but I don't want people to freak out by this... it can live on surfaces for days, actually. If someone coughs or sneezes in here, it doesn't matter if you disinfected yesterday, you've got to disinfect again.'

Cuomo then says with a chuckle: 'Go straight ethnic. Be cleaning everything all the time with the harshest cleaners that you can find.'

Chris Cuomo advises people to "go straight ethnic" with cleaning and disinfecting. pic.twitter.com/oX3AWIXUxG — nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) March 13, 2020

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo (right) has sparked outrage by telling his viewers to 'go straight ethnic' when it comes to cleaning surfaces to combat coronavirus. He made the comments while discussing the pandemic with CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta (left)

During their discussion on Thursday night, Dr Gupta talks about disinfecting surfaces. Cuomo then says with a chuckle: 'Go straight ethnic. Be cleaning everything all the time with the harshest cleaners that you can find'

Some commenters on social media have now demanded Cuomo should be fired.

'While talking about the importance of sanitizing and cleansing, @ChrisCuomo said people need to "go straight ethnic".

'This is an insensitive comment @CNN needs to take [responsibility] and #FireChrisCuomo,' liberal activist Nikola said on Twitter.

Meanwhile, US hospitals are preparing for 96 million coronavirus infections and nearly half a million deaths from the outbreak, leaked documents have revealed.

There was outrage on Twitter, with some commenters demanding Cuomo be sacked - in tweets hashtagged with #FireChrisCuomo

The spread of the deadly disease could be far worse than officials claim, with 480,000 Americans expected to die from the virus and 4.8 million hospitalized, according to a presentation hosted by The American Hospital Association (AHA) in February.

This puts the crisis on a level more than 10 times greater than that seen in a severe flu season.

Donald Trump has also decided to halt all travel from Europe to the US for 30 days starting from Friday at midnight apart from the UK because, he said, 'it doesn't have much infection'. There are 596 cases of the virus in the UK.