Health officials in Texas have urged people not to use bleach to treat coronavirus.
Cristina Holloway, public health manager at North Texas Prison Centre, revealed that the service had received 46 calls this month relating to bleach incidents.
Some of the calls involved people drinking the substance in a bid to prevent COVID-19.
She told NBC: "We certainly are not used to seeing bleach ingestion, at least that frequently in such a short amount of time, and we do know in general this year compared to last we're seeing a whole lot more of bleach exposures."
Holloway blamed misinformation for the spike in incidents.
She explained: "We do know that there's a lot of misinformation through the media, through the internet, so that can also be a contributing factor where people are misinformed and hear it from a neighbour or a friend and think it sounds like a good idea when it could potentially be dangerous."
