The Trump administration is testing existing "off-the-shelf" drugs to combat the coronavirus, a cabinet official said Saturday.

A national lab in Tennessee recently made "an important discovery" involving existing drugs, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.

"The scientists at our Oak Ridge National Laboratory were able to look at the protein strains and determine — perhaps, it's still early — that we can find some off-the-shelf drugs that can help us not only cure the disease but stop the spread of the infection," Brouillette said.

Brouillette was responding to a question about what his agency is doing to help combat the virus, which has caused markets to plunge and killed more than 3,000 people across the globe. In the U.S., where nearly 100 cases have been reported, the virus has killed two people in Washington state.

In addition to the laboratory tests, Brouillette said he's harnessing the power of his agency's "super computers" as well as artificial intelligence capabilities to assist organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and the World Heath Organization to conduct modeling on the virus.

"We want to know how far is this going to spread and at what point might it peak," he said.