Foreign Policy: The countries that are succeeding at flattening the curve

Foreign Policy has published an article written by associate editor Audrey Wilson about the countries that are succeeding in the fight against the coronavirus. He says that Taiwan, Canada, South Korea, Georgia and Iceland show that the coronavirus can be stopped.

Wilson writes that despite its small size and struggling economy, Georgia has managed to have no deaths from COVID-19.

Georgia began taking serious measures at the end of February, including closing schools and conducting widespread diagnostic tests… I think the fact that the government took it seriously from the very start has helped”, writes the author.

Wilson mentions that Georgia is a country that is ‘used to crisis’, that has lived through civil wars and the Russian invasion in 2008, also a very dark period through the 90’s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Taiwan recorded its first case of the coronavirus on January 21, but it has managed to keep its number of confirmed cases to just 329 with five deaths as of April 1.

Taiwan, which sits just 100 miles from mainland China, began inspecting travellers coming from the city on Dec. 31, set up a system to track those in self-quarantine, and ramped up production of medical equipment in January”, writes Wilson and mentions that the country has not yet resumed exports of the supplies, including surgical face masks.

South Korea has shown one more successful example of fighting against the global problem. Although the country had one of the largest initial outbreaks outside China, managed to slow the spread of new coronavirus cases with mass diagnostic testing, without instituting any lockdowns.

It is written in the publication that with 51 million populations, South Korea tests more than 20,000 people daily at designated testing sites and uses isolation and widespread contact tracing to break chains of transmission.

As Canada has a well-funded public health care system, it has no limits on testing its population.

By catching cases early, and investigating their origins, Canada has blunted the impact of the virus thus far”, writes author.

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