PRESIDENT Donald Trump has announced he plans to demand that China pay a "very substantial figure" as compensation for the coronavirus outbreak.

The president also said that his administration are conducting "serious investigations" into the actions they can take against the country.

During his press conference in the Rose Gardens at the White House on Monday, Trump said: "There are a lot of ways you can hold them accountable.

"We're doing very serious investigations, as you probably know. And we are not happy with China. We are not happy with that whole situation.

"Because we believe it could have been stopped at the source. It could have been stopped quickly, and it wouldn't have spread all over the world."

After being questioned by a journalist about a German newspaper's alleged "invoice" of £130 billion to China for "coronavirus damage", he replied: "We could do something much easier than that.

"We have ways of doing things a lot easier than that.

"Germany's looking at things, and we're looking at things, and we're talking about a lot more money than Germany's talking about.

"We haven't determined the final amount yet. It's very substantial.

"If you look at the world, I mean, this is worldwide damage. This is damage to the U.S., but this is damage to the world."

Speaking about the country's financial relationship with China before the coronavirus, Trump said: "If you look prior to this virus, the deficit was coming way down under my administration because I put massive tariffs on China.

"We took in tens of billions of dollars, gave some of it to the farmers who were unfairly targeted by China.

"Nobody's ever done that before. We never took in 10 cents from China.

"Now all of a sudden, I think you know very well, we've taken in tens of billions of dollars.

"I helped the farmers by giving them, two years ago, $12 billion – all coming from China. And we had plenty left over, too.

"And then the following year, $16 billion, and this year we're also going to help our farmers."

The coronavirus has devastated the United States, having killed at least 56,286 Americans.

The country currently has a total of 1,000,832 confirmed cases.

However, 137,465 have recovered from the disease.

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