A video that recently went viral on social media in Lebanon stirred controversy and generated an outraged response from the Lebanese Order of Physicians.
The video showed a man, pretending to be a doctor in a Lebanese hospital, claiming that they’ve been receiving “wave after wave” of COVID-19-infected people arriving from Syria.
The Order of Physicians released a statement on Saturday, April 11th, saying: “A fabricated video is circulating on social media of a doctor working in hospitals in Lebanon, including in the [Southern] Suburbs [of Beirut].”
The statement warned “any doctor or impersonator of a doctor,” against sending messages to the public opinion “that will harm the medical and hospital staff, and cause turmoil in these difficult times that Lebanon is going through.”
Furthermore, the Order of Physicians called on the Lebanese Cybercrime Combating Bureau to conduct an investigation and uncover the perpetrators.
It also declared that it “will be filing a complaint to pursue them before the Public Prosecution.”
The impostor “doctor” in the controversial video claimed that he had been working for “30 hours straight” in a hospital that has been receiving visitors of Sayyidah Zaynab’s shrine, all of whom became infected after contacting Iranian people there.
Some social media posts followed up on the video and claimed that the hospital in question was Al-Rassoul Al-Aazam Hospital in the Southern Suburbs.
Later on Saturday, the hospital responded to the allegations in a statement saying that the video “had no relation to Al-Rassoul Al-Aazam Hospital, not in terms of location, content, nor the person in it.”
The hospital explained that it is not authorized to receive COVID-19 cases in any case, and will be taking legal action against everyone involved in the creation of the fabricated video.
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