Coronavirus crisis to disappear in April: Donald Trump

Washington : US President Donald Trump on Monday said that the coronavirus outbreak must disappear by April due to hotter weather.

"The virus... typically that will go away in April," he told reporters at the White House, adding: "The heat, generally speaking, kills this kind of virus." 

More than 40,000 people have been diagnosed positive to the Coronavirus and 12 confirmed cases have been reported in US. 

Donald Trump praised Xi Jinping and China for their efforts to contain the deadly virus from spreading into the world. 

"(I) had a long talk with President Xi... two nights ago," Trump said.

"He feels very confident... (that) during the month of April, the heat, generally speaking, kills this type of virus. That would be a good thing." 

Donald Trump's remarks comes against the caution raised by the top US health officials against releasing any comment on the future prospects of the virus.

"The issue is, we don't know," Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told reporters Friday.

"And any kind of prediction would be ill-advised because we really have so many unknowns," he added.

A January 31 paper in British medical journal The Lancet warned that, even if the epidemic begins to recede at its epicenter in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in April, it could still grow globally into the second half of the year.