Vice President Mike Pence will be put in charge of the U.S. response to the deadly coronavirus outbreak, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday in an address from the White House.

Trump, speaking without prepared remarks in a rare appearance at the briefing room podium, maintained that the risk to the U.S. from the virus "remains very low," amid global fears that a pandemic could be imminent.

The spread of the disease in the U.S. isn't "inevitable," Trump said, though he noted that it's possible that "it could get fairly substantially worse." A day earlier, federal health officials said the spread of the virus was "inevitable."

But the U.S. is ready for "anything," Trump said, including an outbreak "of larger proportions."

Trump said he would be putting Pence, who has "a certain talent for this," in charge of the response.

The president claimed that his veep's experience with health care policy as governor of Indiana made him a good fit for the role.

Pence will be in charge of coordinating the medical and other professionals working to keep the virus at bay in the U.S., Trump said.

Trump announced the news conference in a tweet Wednesday morning, shortly after returning from a state visit to India where he downplayed the threat of the virus to the U.S. "We're really down to probably 10" cases, Trump told reporters there.