No, this photo of social distancing in a market is not from Mizoram
A photograph of good social distancing being carried out in an open market is going viral of social media. The image shows vendors sitting neatly in organized lines and marked boxes at safe distances from one another.
Claim: Social media users have widely shared the photograph, crediting Mizoram for following social distancing guidelines very well. Most captions read something along the lines of how people should follow the Mizos’ example across the country to fight the pandemic.
Mizoram shows the way…#SocialDistancing pic.twitter.com/5ev3P225WB
— Shobhaa De (@DeShobhaa) April 22, 2020
(Archived)
A friend has shared images of these vegetable markets from Mizoram. Would be great if these could be replicated in other cities as well. @AUThackeray pic.twitter.com/QuJYaDOr9S
— shunali khullar shroff (@shunalishroff) April 21, 2020
(Archived)
(Archived)
Truth
The claim that the photograph is from a market in Mizoram is false. Upon reverse searching the image, we found the oldest source to the image to be a tweet by ABS-CBN, a Filipino media company, with the text “Vendors and buyers practice physical distancing in a public market in Myanmar.” They tweeted this on April 20 and the images have since been shared across social media platforms.
News reports credit this safe distancing activity to Kalaw Myoma market in a town called Kalaw, in Shan state, Myanmar.
LOOK: Vendors and buyers practice physical distancing in a public market in Myanmar.
As of April 20, 2020, Myanmar has 111 confirmed cases of #COVID19, with 7 recoveries and 5 deaths.
📷Jain Weraphong | via @goldiesaurin pic.twitter.com/HVVC5PKvHM
— ABS-CBN News (@ABSCBNNews) April 20, 2020
It was also covered by news outlets in the Philippines. (Link)
The photograph has been circulated in Sri Lanka with the claim that it is from a market in the village of Kantmale in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka. This claim has been debunked by fact-checking website AFP Sri Lanka in their report.
The photograph may be shared in different countries with different captions, but the truth is that this image is from Kalaw Myoma market in Myanmar.
