Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders appeared to confuse coronavirus with previous virus epidemics such as swine flu, SARS, and Ebola during Sunday night’s Democratic debate.

Both of the frontrunners in the race to win the Democratic nomination for president appeared to forget the name of coronavirus during their first head-to-head clash on Sunday night.

The former vice president, Mr Biden, appeared to stumble over the names of previous viruses, and incorrectly referred to swine flu as coronavirus. Mr Biden had cited previous American attempts to manage coronavirus – before correcting himself by wrongly labelling the 2009 H1N1 “swine flu” virus as N1H15.

Responding to the claim by President Donald Trump that red tape in place before he took office had caused delays in deploying coronavirus testing, Mr Biden also appeared to forget the name of the Ebola virus, referring to the virus as “what happened in Africa”, in an attempt to reassure voters that the US was capable of managing the spread of coronavirus, also known as Covid-19.

“We can do that, we’ve been through this before with coronavirus, excuse me, we’ve been through this before with dealing with the viruses the N1H15 as well as what happened in Africa”.

During the 11th Democratic debate Mr Biden went on to confuse coronavirus with the SARS virus, saying: "No one is in a position where they have a significant financial disability as a consequence of this SARS, of this particular crisis".

Mr Sanders also appeared to confuse Ebola with coronavirus. The Vermont senator said that “the Ebola crisis, in my view, exposes the dysfunctionality of our healthcare system”.

The 78-year-old later corrected himself, saying: “We have got to move aggressively right now to address the economic crisis as a result of Ebola, as a result – he’s talking about Ebola, he’s got Ebola in my head here right now."

Mr Sanders added: "As a result of the virus here, the coronavirus."

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