President Donald Trump speaks during the daily briefing on Covid-19, in the White House on April 22. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

President Trump defended the decision to reopen states amid the coronavirus pandemic, saying the virus will not "be coming back" in as many cases as the US saw earlier this year.

"And if it comes back, though, it won't be coming back in the form that it was. It will be coming back in smaller doses that we can contain. What (CDC Director Robert Redfield) was saying and I spoke to him at great length, he was saying if it should come back together, now you have the flu and you have the embers of corona," Trump said.

He continued: "But in my opinion, from everything I've seen, it can never be like anything we've witnessed right now. What we've just gone through, we will not go through. You could have some embers of corona, and you could have a big flu system ... We will not go through what we went through for the last two months."

Reporter to Trump: How can you say the virus will not come back at the same level?