WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump's suggestion that scientists study whether sunlight or disinfectants could be used to treat coronavirus patients prompted alarm Friday from health experts who warned Americans against embracing unproven remedies.

Trump's remarks, in which he floated the idea of using "light inside the body" and studying the use of disinfectants "by injection," triggered an urgent warning from the maker of Lysol that "under no circumstances" should its product be used as treatment.

The considerable blowback, which the White House dismissed as media sensationalism, once again put the president at odds with his own health experts as his administration battles a pandemic that has killed more than 50,000 Americans. Trump has often touted remedies and raised seemingly off-the-cuff ideas at his daily press conferences that top aides have then carefully sought to temper.

Adding fuel to the controversy, the White House initially distributed a transcript of Trump's press conference in which Deborah Birx, one of the nation's leading experts on the coronavirus, said that the method Trump was touting "is a treatment." White House aides released a corrected transcript Friday in which Birx said they were not treatments.

At the White House on Friday, Trump said he was being sarcastic when he suggested that injecting disinfectants inside the body might be a treatment for coronavirus. Asked by reporters if he was encouraging their use, he replied, “Of course not.” He continued to float the possibility that sunlight might be used to treat coronavirus. “Sun has a tremendous impact on it,” he said.

The genesis of Trump's remarks was a Department of Homeland Security study that found the lifespan of the virus on a surface or in the air could be significantly reduced by exposure to sunlight, humidity and other factors. Trump invited a Homeland Security official to brief White House reporters about the study on Thursday.

"Our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have on killing the virus, both on surfaces and in the air," said Bill Bryan, an undersecretary of science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security.

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Bryan described the study as "emerging" and repeatedly warned against Americans changing their behavior based on the preliminary findings. The study was limited to how environmental factors affected the virus on surfaces or in the air, not inside bodies.

After hearing Bryan's presentation, Trump – clearly excited by the findings – pressed the scientists to expand their work into studying whether disinfectants could help patients.

"So I asked Bill a question that probably some of you are thinking of, if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting," the president began.

"So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous – whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light – and I think you said that that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it," Trump said. "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, and I think you said you’re going to test that too. It sounds interesting."

Bryan responded by saying he'd ask "the right folks" who could look into that.

Trump then continued.

"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute," he said. "And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that," he added.

The White House responded to the growing backlash with a statement Friday that blamed the "media" for "irresponsibly" quoting Trump out of context.

"President Trump has repeatedly said that Americans should consult with medical doctors regarding coronavirus treatment, a point that he emphasized again during yesterday’s briefing," White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said.

In an appearance Friday, Trump claimed he was being sarcastic.

Trump has used his daily White House briefings to float unproven treatment options in the past. His early exhortations of anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the virus drew warnings from public health officials that the drug had not been clinically proven to have any impact and subsequent studies about the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have been mixed at best.

The Food & Drug Administration warned Friday that Americans should not take the drug "outside of the hospital setting" or within a clinical trial.

Like his early embrace of hydroxychloroquine, Trump batted away questions about light and disinfectant treatments by saying he wasn't advocating for their use – rather just raising them as a possibility for Americans to consider.

"Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't," Trump said of sunlight.

But the remarks drew a rebuke from doctors and state public health officials concerned about whether the remarks – and the media firestorm surrounding them – could be misinterpreted by some. The Maryland Emergency Management Agency said on Friday it had received "several calls" raising questions about disinfectant use, for instance.

"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 posted on Twitter.

"I certainly wouldn't recommend the internal ingestion of a disinfectant," Food and Drug Commissioner Stephen Hahn said during a CNN town hall following Trump's comments.

Dr. Jesse Goodman, the former Chief Scientist of the FDA and now a Georgetown University professor and attending physician, told USA TODAY the amount of heat and light needed to kill the virus would be harmful to cells within the body and was "not something we now have evidence to support."

"The virus is predominantly inside cells, and the amount of light or heat that you would have to deliver would be toxic to the cells as well," he said.

Ultraviolet light is used to sterilize hospital equipment, he noted, but the level of light is "toxic to human cells, and in fact people can't be in those rooms when they're being sterilized with those devices."

Goodman added that the problem with the use of disinfectants inside the body was "if they're toxic to viruses and bacteria they're generally toxic to human cells as well."

"People should not ingest disinfectants of any kind, or bleach," he said, especially based off a quote or rumor, because "those things can be extremely harmful or even fatal."

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Lysol issued a statement on its website on Friday titled "Improper Use of Disinfectants." The notice said parent company Reckitt Benckiser Group had been asked whether disinfectants are safe to use as a treatment.

"We must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route)," the company said in the statement.

More:Lysol warns against injecting disinfectant after Trump speculates on coronavirus

Trump spoke a day after a Health and Human Services official said he was removed from his post because he questioned the value of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the disease caused by the virus. The attorneys for Rick Bright said Thursday said they would soon be filing a whistleblower complaint on his behalf.

Bryan stressed the findings of the DHS study were not so conclusive that Americans should abandon social distancing guidelines promoted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and enforced by state orders across the country. He said it would be "irresponsible for us to say that we feel that the summer is just going to totally kill the virus."

Trump drew headlines in February for suggesting just that during a campaign rally in New Hampshire. "You know in theory when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away," he said then. "Hope that's true."

At the White House on Thursday, he reminded reporters he had made the prediction and implied that the study confirmed his theory.

"I once mentioned that maybe it'll go away with heat and light," the president said Thursday. "And people didn't like that statement very much."

Contributing: Michael Collins, Savannah Behrmann, Dalvin Brown