U.S. President Donald Trump | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Trump offers ‘help’ to treat Boris Johnson in hospital US president says he has asked ‘leading companies’ to contact London.

U.S. President Donald Trump offered "help" Monday to treat British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is in hospital battling COVID-19, saying he had asked "leading companies" to "contact London immediately" about solutions.

"We'll see if we can be of help. We've contacted all of Boris' doctors, and we'll see what is going to take place, but they are ready to go," Trump said during a press briefing with his coronavirus task force. "We're working with the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] and everybody else, but we are working with London with respect to Boris Johnson."

Johnson was sent into intensive care late Monday after testing positive for the virus last month. Trump said he had asked two companies that have dealt with treating "ebola, AIDS, others" to contact the U.K.

When asked by a reporter to specify this potential treatment, Trump said: "It’s a very complex treatment of things that they’ve just recently developed, and that they have a lot of experience with having to with something else but recently for this." He added: "They’ve had meetings with the doctors, and we’ll see whether or not they want to go that route. But when you’re in intensive care it’s a big deal. So they’re there and they’re ready."

Asked whether Johnson had initially downplayed the threat of the virus too much, Trump responded: “I think Boris was looking at it differently, he was looking at it earlier, he was looking at it like ‘ride it out,’ many people were thinking about riding it out … but then you see what starts to happen and the numbers become monumental.

“He waited a little while and he felt that and he made a decision very quickly thereafter to do what they did.”

The U.S. president also offered his “best wishes to a very good friend of mine, and a friend to our nation,” adding that “Americans are all praying for his recovery.”