The president criticised the media's coverage of his decision to ban those coming to the US from China.

He said that without such an implementation the situation would have been much worse: "You wouldn't have even recognised it to where we are," he told reporters.

The US has more than 9,300 cases of Covid-19 and has seen 150 deaths so far, according to estimates.

Globally there are some 220,000 confirmed cases and over 8,800 deaths.