Israeli PM Shares Part of TV Series as Proof of Iran Covid-19 Deaths Cover-up: Report

The American news website on Wednesday cited two unnamed Israeli ministers as saying that Netanyahu had told his cabinet via a recent conference call that he had seen the footage of Iranian soldiers loading bodies onto trucks and dropping them at garbage dumps.

The Israeli premier, they added, also claimed that his security adviser, Meir Ben-Shabbat, had initially shown him the video.

Netanyahu asked Ben-Shabbet to send the clip to those ministers who wanted to see it.

According to the report, the video had been shared on social media and passed on to Netanyahu without any authenticity check.

Upon further review, however, the clip turned out to be a scene from ‘Pandemic,’ a 2007 Hallmark TV mini-series about a fictional flu pandemic that originates in Australia and eventually threatens Los Angeles. 

One scene in the series depicts a garbage truck dumping dead bodies into a ditch.

Since emerging in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the coronavirus, which can cause potentially fatal respiratory malfunction, has claimed 47,245 lives worldwide.

In Iran, the flu-like virus has so far infected 47,593 people and killed 3,036 others, according to the Iranian Health Ministry. Some 15,473 patients have also recovered from the respiratory disease.

Tehran has been giving daily updates about the total and new infection cases and deaths besides active cases and recoveries.

Iran’s performance in the fight against the virus has been praised by the World Health Organization (WHO) despite the hardships the nation has been facing under American sanctions.

Besides dealing with the disease, the Iranian government has been doing its utmost to prevent any shortage of staples, especially food and sanitary, successfully averting a situation already unfolding in many coronavirus-hit Western states.

Speaking on Tuesday, President Hassan Rouhani said all Iranian provinces had started to witness a downward trend of the viral infection.

In the occupied territories, there have so far been 6,092 coronavirus infections and 26 deaths.

A New York Times report in late March said the virus is spreading fast in ultra-Orthodox communities in the Israeli occupied territories, where people are not abiding by the social distancing guidelines.

Netanyahu on Wednesday ordered all Israelis to wear facemasks and said those who have no access to factory-produced masks could improvise and use other material to cover their face.

Netanyahu’s health minister contracts COVID-19

On Thursday, Israeli Health Minister Yaakov Litzman and his wife were diagnosed with the coronavirus.

The Israeli Health Ministry announced that Litzman and his wife will remain in isolation, adding that those who have been in contact with the pair in the past two weeks will be required to enter home quarantine.

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen and the head of the National Security Council, Meir Ben Shabbat, were asked to go into isolation because of their contacts with Litzman.

Netanyahu had already gone into quarantine after his top aide tested positive for the virus.