With Election Day just around the corner, Donald Trump is running into all sorts of troubles, aside from trailing his opponent Joe Biden in several key states in polls. The president's comments to journalist Bob Woodward that imply he knew the coronavirus was airborne in Feb., while scientists were still debating whether and to what extent it is likely to spread through the air.

This remark indicated that the president was already aware of how the coronavirus spreads and strengthens the allegations of him failing to restrict the spread of the virus. Defending comments that he made to Woodward in a Feb. 7 taped phone call, Trump on Thursday insisted that it wasn't a secret that the virus spread through particles in the air before he made the remark.

"This is stuff that everyone knew," the president insisted. Trump went on to claim he has a report that suggests someone in China said the coronavirus was airborne before he made the statement. "People knew it was airborne," Trump said in a White House press briefing on Thursday.

Referencing the reports, he said everyone knew the coronavirus could spread through the air and claimed that China came out with a statement confirming that it was an airborne disease. The president said he heard it was an airborne disease, and assumed it early on.

Responding to a question about the report he was citing, White House official pointed CNBC to a report from TIME, which was published on Jan. 30. The report indicated that Chinese authorities revealed on Jan. 7 that they had isolated the virus, which belongs to the coronavirus family and spreads through airborne droplets.

Following Trump's private comments to the investigative journalist, Chinese state media The China Daily reported that deputy head of the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau Zeng Qun has revealed that the virus can spread via aerosol transmission, indicating that it was airborne in some situations.

The China Daily's reported was challenged the next day by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which argued there was no evidence that the virus could spread through airborne particles. In the initial stage of the outbreak, scientists raised concerns about the dearth of information about the virus, which came from Wuhan, China at the end of Dec.

Nine months after the virus emerged, scientists have accumulated details about how it spreads and its causes, but claim it is a new virus and more details about it are still scarce. The role that airborne transmission of the coronavirus plays in the spread, has been one of the most controversial questions debated.